Great martial arts & cinematography, but annoying propaganda

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2004)

First, I definitely recommend this movie for gorgeous cinematography and some pretty amazing wire-fu-style martial arts. I'm no martial arts guru but I was plenty impressed.
However, I wound up with a bad taste in my mouth from this movie, and I won't be able to articulate why without giving away big plot points so:
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There were several central themes in the movie that anyone can admire: sacrificing oneself for one's belief or for love, loyalty to one's family and traditions, etc. However, the one theme that overwhelmed it all for me was the pro-totalitarian conclusion. (Spoilers from here on:) Basically, the emperor has a revelation from examining Broken Sword's calligraphy, and says that he'll try to rule peacefully and unite "all under heaven" in one wonderful empire. So far, so good; lots of people are against the "one world government" concept today but aren't particularly offended by it within the confines of utopian fantasies. In response, our Hero decides not to kill the emperor. The emperor's soldiers are rooting for him to be executed, the thrust being that in order to unite all under heaven the law must be upheld.
So we have the emperor - who seemed rather inclined to let the assassin go - and two conflicting principles: the revelation from the calligraphy about how the real strength of the sword is in its disuse, and the absoluteness of the law. He goes with the law, and the hero dies without protest in a dense and impressively filmed swarm of arrows much reminiscent of those used to mow down the calligraphers in the village that the army attacked earlier in the movie. In a split second this not only advocates a rather ugly lack of humanity in the application of the law, not only suggests that one must unprotestingly acquiesce to power whether just or not, but calling back to the rain of arrows from the earlier scene is a fairly strong suggestion that the two instances were no different. Both rains of arrows - the one to execute an assassin (a sympathetic character, but nevertheless a criminal), and the one to slaughter a school full of innocent calligraphers - are justifiable by the philosophy that the good of uniting "all under heaven" outweighs any evil done to individuals.
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Beautiful film, but recoil in horror from the message.