Hero
(4.5 stars out of 5)
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Cast and Crew
China (2002)
Mandarin title: Ying Xiong Length: 99 minutes Directed by: Zhang Yimou Genre: Historical drama Starring: Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Dao-Ming and Donnie Yen |
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Synopsis
In 220 BC, China was divided in 7 kingdoms which were ceaselessly fighting against each other. The biggest desire of the king of the kingdom of Qin is to unite the 7 kingdoms and to create the first dynasty. Because of his ambitions, many assassins were sent by the 6 other kingdoms to kill him, but none of them were more notorious than Broken Sword, Flying Snow and Sky. One day, Nameless, an adventurer, arrives at the king of Qin's palace in order to tell him how he killed the three notorious assassins. |
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Review
]Review[/b]
Well, it's the first Zhang Yimou's movies that I saw and how impressed I were! Although he's not labelled as a action movies director, this Chinese director can be proud to say that he brought some innovations in the genre of kung fu movies. Besides, if you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you will fall in love with this movie. First of all, unlike Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the story of Hero is basically told in retrospective, it means that the movie viewer is plunged into a serie of flashbacks. Personnally, I thought that this serie of flashbacks was terribly senseless, but how wrong I was! At the end of the movie the curtain falls and everything about the assassins intentions is revealed. Besides, just like Ang Lee, the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou manages successfully to combine both compelling feelings and stunning action scenes. However, many people said that this movie looks more like a Japanese movie instead of a Chinese movie. Obviously, Hero is almost like the Japanese movie Rashomon, which was done by international-class movie director Akira Kurosawa. Secondly, in my opinion, Zhang Yimou's style distinguish itself by the mastery of the images, thanks to the photography director Christopher Doyle. Even an impressionist painter like Claude Monet or Auguste Renoir will be jealous of the beauty of the images! This Chinese movie director knows how to use the environment and the colors to give life to his story. Furthermore, it's needless say that the actors evolves in a magnificent theatricality. In addition to this comment, I would like to underline Maggie Cheung's performance which will blow you away. The fight scenes, which are choregraphied by Tony Ching Siu-Tung, are amazingly spectacular. To conclude this review, the comprehension of this movie requires a lot of reflection, because the evolution of the story is not linear. After all, I'm quite sure that the shakespearian accent (it doesn't include the vocabulary) of the movie and its fight scenes will appeal to those who watch movies to admire the artistic quality as well as to those who likes to watch the fight scenes. In to definitely conclude this review, if your mind is totally poisonned with simple and mindless Hollywood movies, Hero is unfortunately not the kind movie for you. |
 User Ratings
Users' Average Movie Rating:
(4.75/5) Movie Review Rating: 2 out of 2 members agree with this review.  User Comments [ page: 1 ]
scm on Sat Aug 27, 2005 13:41
I recently saw it, and it was so hard to understand because it was in Mandarin. Anyways, the fight scenes are good.
hiddendragon on Mon Aug 29, 2005 08:20
Was it in Mandarin with sub-titles? That's right the story was very confusing and I had to see it twice in order to understand it correctly. Anyway, how was the cast's performance?
scm on Mon Aug 29, 2005 20:00
To be honest, I'm not good at seeing an actor's performance. If you ask me, nobody's acting in this movie was very amazing in my opinion.
hiddendragon on Tue Aug 30, 2005 07:50
That's right, the acting was damn hard to appreciate, because the movie itself looks more Japanese than Chinese (although they look less stoic, the Chinese acting is a little bit similar to the Jap acting technic), and you can tell that by the acting. Hmm, after all, it reminds me a little bit of those old Samurai movie.
As for the acting (everybody has their own opinion), many observers said that it is important to look into the character's eyes and listen correctly to the background music in order to "penetrate" into the character's mind. From all the cast, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung were the best at doing it. Obviously, Jet Li is a poker face, as usual. Chen Dao-Ming (the King of Qin) was being rude most of the time. Another point, the fight scenes were damn good.
scm on Thu Nov 17, 2005 19:14
The action is not very jaw dropping for me in terms of action, but it is very stylish. Maybe it's the John Woo of swordfighting?
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