Kicks Crouching Tiger's ASS!!!

Rating: Null/10 (28 March 2003)

First off, I am an action person as in I see romance as a disstraction rather then an useful plot device. Dont get me wrong though, I did enjoy Crouching Tiger and the fight scenes were impressive but, their was too much romance and/ or story in between (the only reason why i was able to sit through the entire thing was becuase of the three leads, two of which are gorgeuos and graceful and one is just Bad Ass even in a romance). That is not to say that Hero has no story and is merely action scene upon action scene with no actual point though. However, what makes hero so radically different then Crouching Tiger, storywise, is that the romance is secondary (but still very important) to the main story of the deaths of the 3 top assasins. Another key difference is that there are three different versions (one version even including another story that explains the romance) of the same story all of which are entertaining in their own right. In fact, the only simularities between Hero and Crouching Tiger is Zhang Ziyi and that there is romance and martial arts involved (of course you could easily relate many action movies to crouching tiger except for the absence of Zhang Ziyi). As much as I would like to go into the different stories, that could possibly ruin the movie so instead I will focus on the various action scenes. Of course, the high lite of the movie is the fight between Donnie Yen and Jet Li in the beginning which is crazy fast and fluid, in fact it has to be the most fluid fight scene that involves wire-work and weapons. Even the use of CGI (which is used very well) flows nicely with the fight becuase they use it to stress how fast Jet Li is moving rather then to merely look cool (the CGI was so impressive that it took me like 10 minutes to figure out why they used it). Some may say that following fights are sub par when compared to the Donnie Yen/ Jet Li fight, but so does every other fight scene in existence, except for the final fight in Fist of Legend and the final fight in Legend of Drunken Master. That is to say that even with the following fight scenes not equaling the intensity of the first, they are still a step above the ones in Crouching Tiger as well as many other movies. However, what might turn some people off to some of the fight scenes is their innovativeness like the first bout between ZHang Ziyi and Maggie Chung in the forest where Maggie fights mainly with leaves and the fight scene that takes place over water. Both are expertly choreographed as well as performed by the actors but its just too much of a change ( to American audiances anyway, unless they have viewed Duel to the Death as I have heh). Now what really sets Hero apart from Crouching Tiger though is the use of the biggest army I have yet to see included in a martial arts movie, requiring an ungodly amount of extras (think the Two Towers but with actual people heh). Which brings me to the next action scene that might also turn off viewers, mainly American viewers, which is Jet Li and Maggie Chung fending off hundreds arrows, many that are CGI arrows (very well done CGI arrows but CGI arrows nonetheless). Now, to focus on the wire-work, the people dont float like on Crouching Tiger, they fly and it looks more controlled then Crouching Tiger becuase of it (the fight over water is the perfect example of what Im talking about).