Not my type of hero!

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2004)

Hero tells the story of a martial arts master who defeats the three assassins that want to execute the Emperor.
Yes, my friends that is the plot. In the whole 96 minute movie, that is most of the plot. But hey don't worry! The director knows how to stretch a story! All he has to do is copy some stuff from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, put in tons of slow-motion shots, add some sappy romantics to the two dimensional characters, and you got yourself 96 minutes of pure, UNCONTROLLABLE.... boredom.
I feel like the critics are just wanting me to see a bad movie. They gave bad reviews to Without a Paddle. It looked good, so I went to see it, and of course, if you look below... you'll see how much I didn't like it. So this week, I was in the spirit of trusting critics, and what did that lead me to see... a movie I liked even less than Without a Paddle. Hero.
As you can tell by now, I'm definitely not going to recommend this one; and I have a lot of reasons why I'm not.
I'm finally getting tired of movies with slow-motion! I wasn't tired of it on The Matrix trilogy or when any other movies with slow-motion came out, but Hero's the cause of why I no longer like watching it. Every battle in the movie is overextended (kind of reminds me of any DBZ show). Battles last 10 minutes when they could only last two. I was going crazy with all the pointless action stuck in here. I would be like "Come on, Jet Li! Just kill her quickly instead of going in slow motion!"
The thing I really hated was that the movie took itself so seriously, and even worse, they never explain how they could do all these amazing things. When I'm watching a guy running across water with ease, I would like to know why, and the movie never explains it.
Hero, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, tried to pull at your heart strings. And again, like CTHD, it has poorly developed characters. But of course it does, the director is too busy showing off his slow-motion skills. "Ewww, look... I can make him go slow-motion!" I guess the director thought he could make Hero a big masterpiece, so he added symbolism and romance in between fight scenes. "See critics! I put symbolism in this scene, so its not all slow-motion action!"
The special-effects were decent overall. Sometimes they were incredible and at other times lousy. Even though there's a really boring scene where Jet Li fights a guy walking on water, the special effects were still amazing. Then there was another scene where Jet Li has to fend off hundreds of arrows, and I couldn't help noticing, "This looks fake." But it was pretty damn cool overall.
The thing that really stood out in this was the cinematography. The director put in no CGI and some of the shots he got were more amazing than CGI shots in other movies. I'd have to say that this was the only reason I didn't completely detest Hero.
Overall, Hero bored me; mostly because of all the excessive slow-motion, poorly developed characters, pointless symbolism, and emotion.

Ying xiong (Hero): D+