Not Too Bad, But No Crouching Tiger

Rating: 4/10 (21 January 2003)

Hero has some good features: some good fights, good acting by Daoming Chen (the king), great locations, and a couple of interesting stunts. But on the whole it's not a very good movie.
The biggie: the plot. It's annoying to see the same scene played out over and over again. (as one filmgoer asked, how many times is she going to die?). The overt message of peace (in a martial arts flick?) is blatantly contradicted by the explicit endorsement of the brutal slaughter of innocents in the name of 'Greater China'. The dialogue seems stilted, and the story is shortened to incoherence by being played out four times.
Also weak: most of the action sequences. The wirework (flying scenes a la Crouching Tiger) is not up to Crouching Tiger/Matrix standards. It's hard to explain, but where in those movie people leaped gracefully, in this movie people sort of shoot here and there like jet planes. It's distracting and not very elegant.
Other annoyances: Most of the acting is not very good and the movie demands acting since there is a lot of screen time devoted to lovers sacrificing themselves, tense dialogues, and political statements. Xhang Ziyi is badly misused as little more than a pretty porcelain doll that cries rather too often. The soundtrack is really rather bad, distracting from and sometimes clashing with the scenes, mostly too loud but sometimes hard to hear. There are also a lot of 'Gladiator' style graphics that are poorly executed, especially the flying arrows.
On the whole it could be enjoyed over beer as a rental but it's no 'must see in the theater' classic. Not only is Crouching Tiger greatly superior but so are a whole generation of Hong Kong kung fu epics (including most of Jet Li's earlier movies). Do yourself a favor and rent one of them instead of paying full price for this one.