Good.

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2003)

I've seen better films with Jet Li. I've seen better films with (Maggie) Cheung Man-Yuk. I've seen better films with (Tony) Leung Chiu Wai. I've seen better films made by Zhang Yimou.
With that said, HERO (Ying Xiong) is a GOOD film. It could have been much better though.
What the movie lacks in plot it adds in action sequences, slow-motion and experimental color corrections. The color corrections are so well used that to the end we can clearly see that they haven't really worked on it as well as they should have. Face-colors, something that is very important, changes between scenes, since they have added to much magenta in one scene and yellow in another. Tweaking one color, without trying to keep the skin tone at one level, makes the all out color correction look like it was made by an intern. It isn't well done. Maybe Zhang Yimou tries a little bit too hard.
The action scenes are nice. Not as cool as in early (1992-1995) Hong Kong movies with Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui, but they are at least nice to look at.
The story is told in flashbacks. If you make a movie all told in flashbacks you really need to have a good reason for it. The reason why a character in a film is in a special state of life is not important - what we are interested in is the journey there. But we don't know the end before the tale begins. That is the bad thing about flashbacks.
Yimou tells the complete film with flashbacks (and flashbacks in the flashbacks). It's not confusing, because he use other colors on the clothes for each flashback scene/world. That is nice. But it isn't fun either. Actually, when we have seen one hour of this movie, we are pretty fed up with being told the same thing over and over.
The movie is really only a very short tale that would have been very interesting to see if it was a short-film. But stretched out to a feature - no. The screenplay is this films most low part.
Zhang Yimou have added several humours elements to the film. That is good. Actually, all the comedy is what makes this film worth watching.
This film could have been so much better. But Yimou is not an action director, Jet Li isn't a drama performer and quite frankly, Ziyi Zhang isn't a good actress.
People who think this film is "sooo good" and "sooo beautiful" haven't seen anything else from China or Asia. They probably are totally stunned by the wire-performances and the neat package, and are too busy reading the subtitles to understand that this film isn't nearly as good as "they say". We have had the same problem before with the REALLY BAD movie CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. But that film lacked everyhting, so in comparission, HERO is very good.
To be honest, I was dissapointed. HERO is probably the lamest movie Zhang Yimou ever made, and a low point in all the casts careers. That is sad. Because the sets, the idea, the filming - that is all impressive. The colors, the action and the screenplay need more work.
Seek out the early films by Zhang Yimou, Jet Li and Maggie Cheung to see good and cool movies instead.
6 out of 10 because of some of the technics.