Hero

 Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago. 

If I were to use one word to describe Hero, that one word would be: ballet. That’s really it in a nutshell: beautiful, well performed, poetic and just not very thrilling.

Hero (or Ying xiong, as it is known in its native China) takes place over 2,200 years ago in the land of pre-unified China, where the king of Qin is attempting to conquer the six kingdoms of China in order to become the land’s first Emperor. Standing in the king’s way are the three assassins who have tried for years to kill him and free the land from oppression: Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and Sky (respectively, Maggie Cheung, Tommy Leung Chiu Wai, and Donnie Yen). Fortunately for the king, word has just reached him that one of his own prefects, known only as Nameless, has successfully killed these three assassins, and now the king wishes to know: how? Enter Nameless (Jet Li, playing the same statuesque, stoic part he plays in every movie. At least he plays the part well.), carrying the weapons of the fallen warriors, prepared to retell his exploits to the king. But all is not what it seems: through the course of the retelling, things don’t seem to sit right in this warrior’s story. Gradually more layers of truth are revealed until we discover that Nameless is actually there to finish the job the other assassins could not.

This movie is so much fun to look at, its no wonder that other elements of the film seem to fall apart at times. For example, the telling and retelling of the different story possibilities of exactly what Nameless did happen with so little evidence of time and place change that if director Zhang Yimou did not have a strong visual style, you would probably be dumbfounded as to exactly what you were watching and when it all took place. Fortunately, the director uses some beautiful and vibrant colors in each story element to help the mind delineate and clarify the parts of the story (green/red/blue/white/etc.) Following in the same cinematic style as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero also features some beautifully crafted and executed fight sequences, where the warriors hurl themselves like projectiles, sprint across the surface of lakes and fight about each other like dancers in some lethal tango. Of course, most of the fight sequences are of little to no consequence for the story, but when did that ever stop anyone?

But a movie cannot be built on beautiful cinematography alone, as Hero undoubtedly proves. While the individual fight scenes are thrilling and exciting, the film fails to transfer the thrills from the individual stories to the overall movie, and Hero suffers as a result. Additionally, the film just barely manages to have even a modicum of substance, which only shows up in the last fifteen minutes, making it appear as though the “theme” was tossed in at the last minute (Not surprisingly, the American version has lost ten minutes to the Chinese version, presumably to put the fight sequences closer together). The only worthwhile theme actually shows up indirectly, when we discover that on top of being a master swordsman, Broken Sword is also a master calligrapher: the marriage of violence and art. Violence may be a wicked thing, but it can also be work of art in itself.

Hero is without a doubt the most beautiful and fun to look at film I have seen in ages. It’s just a shame the director couldn’t put the same energy into the story direction as he did into the visual style.