This is a Long review! Only read if you are Bore! lol

Rating: 8/10 (9 January 2003)

I love watching movies, and I can say I enjoyed watching this film. I am not going to say what it has accomplished and what it hasn't yet, but I am going to recommend this film to you if you do love films like me, this is one, which you shouldn't miss out. But like all things, it is not perfect and do contain faults. First, I will explain in my view the mistakes it has made then I will explain what it has that really attracted me to it.
The main defect I see in this movie is: it is too commercial; there are some unnecessary characters in there just to boost ratings and ticket sales. Characters like `Like Moon'( Ziyi Zhang) and `long sky'(Donnie Yen) need not to be in it, I have to say Ziyi Zhang is a very beautiful woman and Donnie Yen was really good at his movies but I feel their part in it has no relevance to the story line. It seems to me they shape the movie to merge them into it rather then their present to shape the movie. There are also a lot of unnecessary fighting sequence just to make it all COOL. All of which is done so mindless people can enjoy it. The story itself is really quite simple and the time it took to explain it really amazes me in many ways, I also found the beginning a bit confusing but I guess it's just me. I myself generally like movies with meanings and Hero has tried to add meaning to it and it some ways it has achieved that but compare to similar movies like, For example, Crouching Tiger Hidden dragon. The meaning is just not deep enough, and this is the simplest way I can explain it. I can sense the importance of Love in this movie but I think it should have been explain clearer. The ending was not bad but it felt a bit rushed to me. I don't think they put too much thought into the ending and just call it hero because it sounded Cool or something. The music compare to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is really quite crap, I mean CTHD's scores actually moved me; the scores from Hero just went pass me like those arrows against Flying Snow. I do think CTHD is general a better film than Hero mainly because they didn't tried as hard to make the movie sell and CTHD do have a better story lines, more deeper meaning and sensible fighting scenes not like Hero. Not to mention the music was a hell lot better even through I think the same people did them .Not sure about that.
After all I said, I still think Hero is a worthy of the title `Epic'. The sheer size of the environment is worth noticing, especially the army. The whole movie was beautifully shot and I gave all the credits to Yimou Zhang to his fine directing, and I really do mean this. There is not many directors in this world right now that could think like him. This is truly a masterpiece in colors used. I really love the way their bright color clothing changes in different scenes. I especially love the idea of those candles; bloody good is all I can say. The style is unlike CTHD but It feels similar in other Chinese movies but I am sure no other Chinese movies have achieved this level of style in fighting and directing. Each fight scenes is like a pair of ballet dancers drifting along with each other. Very cool indeed! I also love the use of arrows, not sure what I actually means but it sure looks damn cool seeing thousands of them flying across the sky like that. As Maggie Cheung and Tony leung are in this movie, I would assume great acting is involve ever since I saw `In the mood for Love', this couple is just tremendous on screen. The emotion in both of them could be felt from far away off screen. Jet Li was also good but everyone knows he was in it for the action and good action he did.
I really do think this movie is very much for Chinese, I think very few non-Chinese people will actually understand the dialog and understand why those people do what they do. To most of them their actions will just seems strange and weird, I don't think this is a film for America to embrace, not that I am saying all Americans don't like it. Just this is not a Hollywood movie and not everyone is going to understand or even enjoy it at all. But I would encourage those who would want to see it to see it.