A film that needs two reviews

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2019)

Hero is a unique film in that it needs two reviews. The first review would be founded upon the standard set of criteria: production, directing, scripting, acting, cinematography. On nearly all of those measures, Hero remains an outstanding effort.
Unfortunately, there is another criteria that simply cannot be ignored, especially with regard to this film. This film fails miserably in terms of its message. It is, in fact, a government sponsored propaganda film, and given that said government is the Chinese Communist Party, then this message cannot morally be overlooked.
We have here a beautiful film that tells the story of a young man with exceptional kung-fu talents, so well developed that it appears he is impervious to mortal risk in combat. And yet, having spent over an hour of film explaining this reality, as well as treating said man's honorable quest to right great evil, when presented the very moment he has carefully planned for, he abandons his entire quest and allows himself to be killed by the very evil man he wishes to vanquish.
Why the sudden change of heart?
Nothing more than said evil leader's appeal to the nationalistic need to even embrace evil if said evil controls the future of a nation!
This sort of fascistic evil would hardly be tolerated if any western director and production studio had attempted to peddle it. Rightly, such a production would be widely condemned for defending evil.
For those who have to earn a living within the Chinese Communist system, such as director Yimou Zhang, one has to carefully phrase things to balance between a compelling desire to tell the truth, and an understandable desire to avoid torture in prison.
For his part, director Zhang has said, "The Chinese censorship system has been in practice for many years. I don't think there will be much change in society in the short run. This situation has been present for a long time and it is a reality in China. I work and live in this system."
He also said this, "When I look back at the times I shot artistic movies, I found I learned quite a lot from them. I hope to do both -- make more personal films which I prefer; and in certain circumstances, I will shoot some other commercial movies like these two -- Hero and House of the Flying Daggers."
Finally, to perhaps fully explain the director's actual views, there is this quote he made: "Western audiences can gain an impression of China from my films. This is an excellent channel for promoting China's culture."
When one puts those three quotes together, one can piece together the honest expressions of a conflicted man, one trapped in a system of censorship, where he has to produce movies paid for by the Chinese Communist film industry, and also avoid any criticisms of it that would land him in prison.
On every moral foundation, Hero must be looked at from both an artistic and political level, because it is a movie spectacularly well made, that was intended from the start to be a propaganda film that supported the Chinese Communist government. The masterful director who created the film seems to be trying to thread his way through a risky political needle, to both express his fears, but also avoid suffering for those expressions.
A movie, who's mission is to support evil, cannot be considered a positive effort, regardless of how hard the people work to try to make it a masterful creation. This is sad, because it reveals human talent being abused by selfish interests, and in that regard, the ultimate truth of this movie is that it stands as a warning beacon for the dangers in state sponsorship of films. Perhaps one day, even those who made this film will be able to finally stand free and state their own moral angst at having been forced to make it the way they did.
Until then, we, who do live free, must say it for them. This movie, ultimately, must be measured more by the politics that created it, vice the production values it otherwise possesses.