Hero is visually stunning

Rating: Null/10 (30 August 2004)

After sitting for two years, Hero makes its belated bow in the U.S. after some help from Miramax and Quentin Tarantino (who has been influenced by this genre of Asian Cinema.) The spoken language is in Chinese Mandarin with English subtitles. Nominated for best foreign film (China) at last year's Oscars, it is a deceptively simple tale of love and sacrifice told with broad strokes and set against actual events.
During the reign of the First Emperor of China, a mysterious figure (Jet Li) approaches the king to offer his support after his claim of vanquishing the king's three would-be assassins. Herein lies the conceit of the film, namely whose version is the truth? Some things are not what they seem. The story plays like an epic detective story utilizing Akira Kurosawa's classic, Rashomon, in telling the same story through different versions and points of view, and these scenes are told with strikingly contrasted color schemes in cinematography by Christopher Doyle (kind of reminds one of the hues employed in South Pacific) and costume coordination by Emi Wada. It also has concurrent themes of rivalry and love between two of the principal assassins.
Comparisons to Akira Kurosawa's grandeur of Kagemusha and Ran are obvious. In many ways, Hero is a distant cousin of these spectacles in terms of its scope, production values, acting, and themes. The fight scenes are a dazzling display of the same action prominent in numerous Chinese period action films of the 1960's and 1970's which are only recently getting rediscovered. Tarantino was highly influenced as evident in his Kill Bill bookends.
Better known for his more intimate dramas, director Yimou Zhang (Raise the Red Lantern) knows how to get good performances from his talented veteran cast. One wishes that Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) had a stronger and more substantial role, but that is a small complaint. The fight sequences are well conceived and choreographed although the Crouching Tiger style of super warriors who can literally fly and walk on water gets a bit repetitive after awhile. Also, even though the emotions run high, one wonders how many scenes of flowing tears are enough. As the character Nameless, Jet Li is perfectly cast as a kind of man with no name like the spaghetti westerns of Eastwood. It is a role which plays to his strengths. One could easily imagine a young Toshiro Mifune excelling in this role.

By making this visually spectacular film, Zhang has combined a strong degree of human drama with historical events. In the end, one feels the familiarity of the Star Trek: Wrath of Khan story theme, the good of the many outweigh the few or the one'. It could easily be said that the film carries a subtle statement about the current state affairs with mainland China and Taiwan. It may not necessarily win any converts, but fans of this ambitious kind of moviemaking will appreciate the action and sweep of a technically proficient film.