Crazy beautiful artwork of a movie!

Rating: 8/10 (2 February 2006)

"Hero" is so beautiful it's almost borderline crazy. I've never payed so much attention to a film's color, scenery and such before...the cinematography is just mind-blowing.
The story is good - Jet Li plays a nameless hero who meets the Emperor of Qin after he defeats 3 of the Emperor's most powerful assassins (Sky, Flying Snow and Broken Sword played by Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung respectively). The "hero" explains to the Emperor how he defeated the 3 assassins, prompting a series of flashbacks. After hearing the stories, the Emperor realizes that the "hero" is actually the most dangerous assassin of all and everything was just a set up for him to get close enough to the Emperor so he could use his special move "Death at ten steps" which is such an uber-cool name.
What's interesting is the film's use of imagery to tell the story. During the first set of flashbacks about Broken Sword and Flying Snow, everything is in red: everyone's wearing red, the background is red, everything. Move on to the king's interpretation of what really happened: everything is in blue. Finally, "hero" reveals the truth and the flashback shows everything in white (and there's also this green scene which cannot be missed!). It turns something which could have potentially been amazingly annoying (three flashbacks of pretty much the same incident) into three separate stories. The scenery is also something to be amazed at. The fighting scene on the lake between the hero and broken sword is one of the most beautiful moments I've ever seen on a screen. Without all the brilliant cinematography the film would, quite frankly, not even be half of what it is. Don't take that as a bad thing though because honestly, it's just too pretty to not be watched. You'll probably want to watch it again just to analyze the film's use of color.
The fighting too, without a doubt, is worth a mention. Of course, with Jet Li and Donnie Yen in it, action and intense Kung Fu is expected. Li is his usual amazing Kung Fu fighting self but all other characters, like Cheung's character and Zhang Ziyi's character also do some impressive butt-kicking (the fight scene between those two female characters is also amazingly beautiful. Both are dressed in red and fight in the midst of swirling yellow leaves).
With the actual acting, it's all convincing. Li maintains a placid face almost throughout the entire movie and this just makes his character all the much cooler. Donnie Yen is good in his part...although it lasts for like 10 minutes and he has a really annoying strand of hair in front of his face. Maggie Cheung is incredibly cold...which is a good thing because that's what her character is. Zhang Ziyi is....well...her character is pretty weird so let's forget about that. In terms of Tony Leung, personally, I don't think he looks very Kung Fu-esquire so it was weird for me to see him as one of the "most powerful" assassins (there's this one bit when Jet Li's character explains to the king: "Broken sword (Leung's character) is probably equal to me in ability" and I just couldn't help but find that weird because Leung just didn't look it. I know I'm supposed to think of them in terms of the characters they were playing and not the actual actors...but seriously...comparing Tony Leung to Jet Li in terms of Kung Fu???). He looked more nomad-like than anything else but other than that, his acting was good...just a matter of me not being a fan of him.
This movie's not perfect though of course. Some bits were just plain weird (like the scene where "hero" and Sky fight 'in their minds' which I kinda thought, yea right they're gonna close their eyes in a middle of a fight and leave themselves totally open for attack). Even though the movie itself is not that long, it IS extremely slow paced. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I watched "Fist of Fury" just before watching "Hero" but to me, even the fighting scenes seemed slower than grip-the-edge-of-your-seat speed. I guess that it's deliberate because again, it does make it more beautiful and this movie isn't trying to be the next blood and guts action movie with monster trucks.
So I guess, if you're looking for an all out action flick, rent Die-Hard instead (or "Fist of Fury" if you want Kung Fu fighting). If you're looking for something that will totally amaze you and make you want to live in a pagoda in the middle of a lake in China, Hero is the way to go. Good stuff. Makes you think...and most importantly, has JET LI (and he's the coolest character!!)