A waste of money and time

Rating: 2/10 (9 March 2003)

"Hero/YingXiong" is a self-important movie that incorporates much of what is bad with Hollywood, and is a huge disappointment from Zhan Yimou - who should be leading chinese films into a much more progressive direction. It borrows ideas from Crouching Tiger, The Matrix, Rashomon, and adds a plot with no backbone and characters as shallow as it gets. This is the 22nd movie I watched this year, and very possibly the worst one.
Martial arts movies traditionally stress a sense of fun and silliness, but we cannot ignore Ang Lee's infinitely superior Crouching Tiger had raised the genre to a new level by bringing a sense of urgency in the plot, and combining great cinematography in a way that adds to the experience. Unfortunately it has been brought down again to new lows by "Hero". All the slow-motion and artsy feeling do not fit in well here at all. There is no coherence, as the movie strives to be everything and achieves very little but to bore us again and again. The sense of fun is taken away by the slow pace and characters we are not made to care about. The simplistic message at the crux of the movie ("heaven under") shows us a jingoistic view of the world, which most informed viewers will not appreciate.

Jet Li does a good job though, maybe the only positive impression I came out with.
I am thoroughly disappointed by Zhang Yimou and don't feel he is leading the pack of chinese filmmakers that we should look forward to achieving greatness. I would refer all who watched this to see "Emperor and the Assassin", which is a straightforward (non-kung-fu) story which is also about the Qin emperor and his assassin - an old fashioned linear plot that works. Or go rewatch "Rashomon" for a true classic, for a similar structured plot that IS coherent.