Visual splendor mixed with intriguing storytelling

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2014)

Of the wuxia films that surfaced in the west after the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this one is definitely one of the best, if not the best one.
Hero is a confident film. It opens where most movies would end, with the protagonist presenting himself to the emperor to receive his rewards. And from there the story is told almost solely through flashbacks, which would usually condemn this movie in its entirety, but somehow they make it work. A lot of that has to do with the storytelling device where the exact same story is told over and over again, but every time this happens, it's told slightly differently. This beautifully emphasizes the importance of viewpoint as well as existing prejudices and expectations when either telling a story or hearing one.
And even then it would have gotten pretty boring, with the exact same actors going through exact same routines, but the cinematography is so well designed that the every time we return to a familiar scene, it feels different, and not just because it plays out with slight variations. The colour scheme is always drastically different, the layouts have changed a little bit (yet the settings are always identifiable) and even the score seems to underline the moods in new ways.
It's a fascinating film to watch and it always keeps you guessing until the very end. It speaks of richness of its characters that at the final scene I had no idea what the protagonist was going to choose. Not because his character was too unpredictable, but because I understood his blight and the difficulty of the decision.
If you have any love for wuxia films or Chinese culture, or if you'd like to see a story told in a way you've rarely seen, you owe it to yourself to watch this film.