Beautiful in so many ways

Rating: 10/10 (1 November 2003)

I bought the DVD for HERO as an import from Hong Kong, not knowing what to expect. I had heard several recommendations that the scenery and visuals were gorgeous, but that's about it. I was surprised to find that it actually had a very interesting and engrossing plot as well. The acting was well done, particularly in the portrayals of Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and his servant Moon. The artistic nature of the film is in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (though don't bother comparing the two beyond that, they're completely different entities other than fighting style, which was a different enough concept here to be original), and literally every camera shot and scene is breathtaking. The unsung heroes of this film are really the cinematography team. There is not a single scene where I didn't marvel at the visuals, or commend those behind the film for creating something original and stimulating. At first I thought the plot was simple, until I got further into it and realized that it was much more complex than I imagined. The storytelling is almost a nod to Kurosawa's "Rashomon", changing the nature of the story through different perspectives in flashbacks.
Yes, Jet Li's "Nameless" character was a tad one-dimensional, but in the context of the film, he's *supposed* to be. You end up feeling less for him, and more for the characters that surround him, but I believe that's the entire point of the film; the concept that the character was only as deep as his mission at the start, and how the events that occur within the story lead to changing him at the end. The same could be said for the plot, which is deceptively more than it appears to be at first.
I would fully support a North American release of this film, as I think it's the kind of movie that deserves to be seen by a wider audience.