The Best? Not so

Rating: 5/10 (14 November 2006)

It's taken so long for Chinese films to go to Hollywood. But be warned this is never one of the best you can get.
The plot is set in the Qin Dynasty. The King of Qin, who is likely to unify China at that time, has long been worried about being assassinated. He fears the three famous assassins. But they're then said to be defeated by Nameless, which makes the King summon Nameless. But in fact this is all planned for Nameless to come to the King.
I will not say the story is impressive because I've read a similar but better story written by a famous Chinese writer.
Yimou Zhang wisely uses different colours to illustrate different emotions, which makes the whole picture extremely beautiful. Yet the so long story-telling may not be very pleasant, especially when the stories told by Nameless are of not much importance.
With Yimou Zhang's own fame, the best, I would say, actors and actress in Hong Kong (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) and China (Daoming Chen) play the leading roles. But I'm not satisfied with their performance in the film probably because the characters in the film are not quite suitable for them. Take the King of Qin. The King of Qin is said to be a very fierce man, but the King in the film is so much softened. The worst actress must be Ziyi Zhang. I really can't relate her to the film much and most of the time she's just yelling loudly, which is really distracting.
I understand why Hero hit the box office in western countries, but if you watch the early films directed by Yimou Zhang like Raise the Red Lantern, you will find Hero is not the best of his and is probably overrated.