Beautifully acted and photographed but not much more than spectacle

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 2007)

Given the early success of this film around the world and its belated large-scale release in the USA, plus the earlier artistic and financial popularity of Tarantino's "Kill Bill" and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger", it's probably safe to say now that the conflation of art-film and martial arts is a genre that is not going away.
I'm glad; the martial arts film is every bit as important to the pop film culture of Asia as the western is in the United States, and there isn't any reason to believe that the potential quality of the "chop-socky" couldn't reach the heights that Ford, Hawks, Mann, Eastwood, and Leone among others hit with that quintessentially American (and later, Italian) genre. "Hero" as much as "Kill Bill" wears its influences obviously, though perhaps in a less overt and flashy see-what-I'm-doing manner. The story of "Nameless" (read: Clint Eastwood's characters in Leone films) as he bests the finest of assassins is retold several times in several ways, leaving us to ponder Rashomon-like the real truth. The feats of individual skill and heroism are reminiscent of and even more impossible than those in "Crouching Tiger" or "The Matrix" (itself heavily indebted to martial arts films), though in keeping with the conservative and heavily censored Chinese film culture the violence is strictly PG-13. The film pushes its mythic single-hero capable of defeating armies conceit to the point where any tangible association with a real historical past is moot; these are Gods walking the earth.
The film is awesomely beautiful with intricate color schemes changing scene by scene; the camera-work typically crisp, clean and painterly as in Zhang's previous films; and the performances are a good as you could expect from four of the greatest Chinese actors of their generations -- Eastwood-like Jet Li, emotional and vulnerable Tony Leung, fierce and proud Maggie Cheung and wild, impulsive Zhang Ziyi. I'm totally in love with Maggie who I've been following since "Irma Vep" and "Comrades, a Love Story"; hard to believe she turned 40 on the day I originally wrote this piece.
And yet, the great parts don't quite add up to a masterful whole. It's incredibly beautiful, stunningly acted and fought, and fairly tightly plotted, but there just isn't a lot to grab onto; the characters don't transcend their archetypes, and the end seems predetermined. Perhaps this would appeal most to the hard-core aficionados; I liked it quite a bit, and I'm glad that Zhang (once beloved in art-house circles for "Raise the Red Lantern", "Ju Dou" and "To Live") has a hit and that the foreign-language film seems to have some hold in America yet, but it just didn't leave me with much. Worth a look for sure, but it doesn't improve on its forefathers.