Very moving.

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2004)

It's a very rare occasion that a foreign, let alone Chinese, film ever graces it's presence into the local cinema around my hometown. Much to my delight, they decided to show Hero. I went into the film expecting a lot of martial arts action but received a little more than that. Not only was I treated to really amazing wire action, but the plot and the photography were actually more intriguing than the action. Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Daoming Chen all gave wonderful performances. At some points I could actually relate to what their characters were feeling, which is very rare for me since this is first and foremost a period piece. The only performance that was a huge let down was Ziyi Zhang's. Ever since I saw Rush Hour 2 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon I've had somewhat of a crush on this Chinese enchantress. Much to my dismay, however, I found her character quit useless in the plot except for a few key scenes, which could be questionable for their usefullness as well. Her character seemed to be a very minor character and the producers just used her mass appeal to sell more movie tickets. The plot reminds me very much of Rashomon. Rashomon is a Kurosawa Akira flick that functions mainly on flashbacks and the flashbacks are all initially the same but different as told by different people. It's always nice to see film makers make a movie featuring this kind of plot structure. It's very rarely done in this case. Also another Kurosawa reference that I noticed, is the scene with the arrows falling through the roof of the calligraphy school and the master refuses to move because he feels that his livelyhood should not be challenged by this attack. He just sits there and does what he is meant to do, make calligraphy. As he does this all kinds of chaos and destruction is happening around him, students are dying left and right, and he just sits there. This particular scene very much reminds me of Kurosawa's Ran when the king's castle is being attacked and all he can do is just sit there. While the context and theme is very different, they both remind me of the same thing. Sometimes you have to accept (or in Hero's case, challenge) the chaos that is happening all around you and accept your fate. -9 out of 10-