A flowing work of art, one of the supreme masterpieces of cinema

Rating: 10/10 (18 November 2006)

If the opening line is any indication, I loved this movie. In an age when Hollywood is taking what's profitable over what's good and is increasingly pumping their movies full of stale clichés, Zhang Yimou's Hero comes sailing over from China like much-needed reinforcements to the forces of good movies.
A man without a name, called Nameless(that makes sense) is on his way to meet with the Emperor of Qin for killing the three deadliest assassins in China. Thus begins a time-twisting battle of the minds between the two as they both share their interpretations of the events. Each interpretation has its own color scheme, too! Nameless' initial flashback is red, followed by blue. The emperor's is green. And the truth is white.
This movie is nothing short of epic. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers marching on a small Zhao town before inundating it in a literal storm of arrows. Dazzling special effects that create all manners of impossible images that will stick with you for weeks after you see them. Insanely complex and beautiful fight scenes between martial arts masters which enrapture the imagination and make your jaw hang down. And the 'fight on the water' scene, which is easily one of the five coolest things I have ever seen. The soundtrack is hauntingly beautiful: one of the main themes is a remix of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon music, but Tan Dun composes some new music as well, and it's just as thought-evoking. There's little dialogue, but what is said typically means a lot. All in all, the movie moves with a grace and an inspired soul much like the greatest works of poetry.
The film's story, and its ending, however, are what transforms it into a merely great film into a true masterpiece. Nameless is torn between Flying Snow and Broken Sword: Snow, fiercely nationalistic to her homeland of Zhao, wants the Qin emperor killed. Sword, however, realizes that the emperor might stand a chance of unifying China. If he killed the emperor, it simply would have been a continuation of the war between the states. If he let the emperor live, it would be an act of good on a level greater than Zhao or Qin. In the end, he decides to let the emperor live, praying that he remembers the ideal of a warrior.
Not everyone will endear to what basically boils down to the closest thing there is to pro-war message in movies lately. Some people think that war is an evil in all situations bar none. But the them of the movie is sacrifice for a greater good.
To give you a historical background, Hero takes place during the Warring States period, which went from the 5th century BC to 221 BC. During this period, China was in a state of constant warfare between a handful of competing states all vying for power. Its precursor was the Spring and Autumn period, the Chinese dark ages in which power was decentralized and up to 170 different states grappled for supremacy. This was not the idealized disorder that anarchists promise you where everyone is communal in their possessions and actions: this was utter chaos. Millions of lives were snuffed out by centuries of incessant war and cities were razed. By killing the emperor and preventing Qin from taking control of China, who knows how long the Warring States period would have continued? The events of Hero are fictional, but the point remains: war can solve things, for right or for wrong. When faced with such challenges on the scale of millions of people, you have to realize that some people will die no matter what you do.
Hero is the best movie of 2002 when it was made and 2004 when it came out in the US. I hope Zhang Yimou keeps it up. I'm getting sick of all the prosaic potboilers infesting the Hollywood market.