Disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (21 January 2005)

I had been waiting for at least a year when I went to see "hero". So maybe I was expecting too much, because it really was a disappointment to me. I don't know if the dubbing was part of the problem. When I watched "crouching tiger,...", I saw it in Chinese with English subtitles. But this time, the film was dubbed in English, and I can't stress enough on how bad it was. All the dramatic scenes were overplayed, and because of that, the movie theater broke into laughter on many occasions during scenes which were supposed - I think - to be dramatic. And the translation didn't help either. I mean the English-dubbed script doesn't sound of Chinese origin, at least in martial arts movies. It sounded like a parody.
As for the fight scenes, well I don't want to keep comparing to "crouching tiger,...", but the director seemed to be over-stressing on the artistic side of it while wasting much of the substance. I understand that the color theme of each scene was on purpose and it was related to each version of the story told by either "nameless" or the king, but this was too distracting to really enjoy those scenes.
Regarding the actors, "Jet Li" was plain and unimpressive as usual. "Maggie Cheung" was good, and "Zhang Ziyi"'s role was useless; at least how her acting made it seem to be.
Again, I never really thought that dubbing a movie could pretty much ruin it, so I think I'd have to watch it in its original version so I could make a clear opinion about it, but for now I'll give it a 3/10.