beautiful but weak in plot

Rating: 5/10 (27 August 2004)

I can't understand why the rating is above 8. I would only give 5 or 6 to this movie. In Hong Kong, or China, many people will say this is not an outstanding movie. Yes, the shot is beautiful. The fighting is great. But the moving is quite boring. Most importantly, the plot is weak and does not truly refect the Chinese culture.
The story of "Hero" is like this: there were seven kingdoms in China and Qin was the most powerful one. A few assassins ("Nameless" (Jet Li) being one of them) wanted to kill the King of Qin. But "Nameless" "discovered" that the King of Qin can unite the China for the good of the whole Chinese citizens so he gave up killing the King.
In "Hero", it described the King of Qin as a good King who wanted to unite China for peace finally. But in the history, we Chinese all know that the King of Qin was a cruel king who by all means of foul to achieve what he wanted. There was really (or a famous legend or story) a assassin from one of the seven kingdom had tried to kill him but failed. The King of Qin ruled the citizens under high pressure. I have no idea whether the movie has any political reasons, but it really distorted the Chinese history.
Another thing which is quite absurd is the use of colors. Its painstaking to use one or two color tones. But it is overused which makes the movie laughable and stupid.