Excellent Kung-fu and special effects

Rating: 9/10 (10 August 2004)

The story is pretty well covered in other reviews so I'll skip it.
I'll just comment on this: It has very nice fight scenes, IMHO better than Crouching Tiger. The story line is quite different and the treatment is quite different from Crouching tiger. This is not a sequel nor a rip-off, just like Crouching tiger was not a rip-off of Chinese Ghost Story 1. However the style is inspired, and I think it's just the new Hong Kong style.
Hero has very good army scenes, and the archery attacks are pretty awesome, reminiscent of the CGI work done in Lord of the Ring.
The only unsettling thing for action fans is that the movie is multiple, though very different, renderings of the same events, narrated by different people until the truth is reached.
Cinematography is very good, a little similar to Peter Pan 2003 where the colors palette is retouched depending on the emotion.
Enjoy!.. I did :)