CORRECTED REVIEW: Long Live the Qin Emperor. Long Celebrate the Honor of a True Warrior

Rating: 8/10 (4 September 2004)

[See the IMDb main page for "Hero" for cast names: only Jet Li is well-known in the U.S.]
"Hero" has been available for home viewing for several years but it needs to be seen on a big screen for maximum enjoyment of its powerful scenes, beautiful locations and impressive score. It's in theaters now.
The Qin emperor long, long ago united a coterie of warring states to begin the violent, tortured process of wielding the immense land called China into a formidable nation (to give an idea of how ancient this story is, there were NO take-out restaurants when the Qin monarch launched his huge forces).
In this film, directed by Zhang Yimou, Jet Li is Nameless which is his name since he wasn't given one at birth. A martial arts master, he enters into the near most crack-brained but unique conspiracy scheme in film history. From a province decimated by the Qin emperor's army, he's allied with three professional assassins, two men and a woman - all are sworn to murder the monarch.
Through a series of flashbacks the conspiracy is rolled out with many fighting flourishes reflecting some rather neat martial terpsichore. Don't expect the story to make sense, especially to Western audiences. What makes "Hero" work is the internalized, expressed and slowly developed ethic of honor of the four assassins, especially Nameless. These people have a soul as well as a plot and it's projected very nicely. My teenage son couldn't even slightly understand Nameless's final expressive act at the end of the film, itself a comment on how different our time and our culture are from that of ancient China.
The fight scenes aren't as elaborate as those in the outstanding "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which has an elegance a bit missing here. They're good, though. But given the what and the why of the conspiracy a somewhat rawer approach makes sense. The gal-servant-with-a-sword, Moon, is beautiful and an interesting character by the way.
I'm no martial arts-film fan but this movie was worth an hour and a half of my time.
The score, by Tan Dun, a very important contemporary classical music composer (he won an Oscar for his score for the earlier Ang Lee kung-fu flick), is excellent. The score reflects a fusion of ancient and modern Chinese musical idioms. Tan Dun performs some of the violin solo lines but most proclaim the superb virtuosity of the greatest Sino-American fiddler, Itzhak Perlman.
The CD of the soundtrack is for anyone who enjoys Tan Dun's exciting and very original compositions.
For its type,
8/10