Probably inspired by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Zhang Yimou had decided
to make his own martial arts epic, and Hero is the result. Based on
legends of old, and starring top Hong Kong actors, Hero promises to
blend large-scale set-pieces with breathtaking cinematography and
stunning martial arts.
This it does proudly and boldly, but the major
setback is in the story itself, which I have to stress, is a bit
too convoluted for my taste. The reason here of course may lie with
director Zhang Yimou. Zhang is well known as an arthouse film-maker
with some critically acclaimed films to his name such as Raise the
Red Lantern, Red Sorghum and To Live. His love for arty stories
may be why Hero does not have an expansive plot, but scenes recycled
again and again, told in different perspectives.
The story revolves around an assassination attempt
by three renowned warriors on the King of Qin, whose ambition is
to conquer the other states and unite China into one empire. Broken
Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Sky (Donnie
Yen) are the three warriors who the king fears the most. To his
astonishment, a single nameless warrior (Jet Li) vanquishes them
all, and the king wants to know how this seemingly normal person
could beat three of the fiercest warriors in all the six kingdoms.
Many critics will compare Hero with Crouching
Tiger, and in many ways there are similarities between the two films,
especially in the music score and martial arts. If you expect hand
to hand combat, then you'd be disappointed because there is none.
All combat is conducted with weapons, and if you're a fan of swordplay,
then you'd be impressed by the sheer fluidity of the actors' movements,
because it looks amazing, even more so than in Crouching Tiger.
There are also plenty of wire-fu (ie. Flying around) like in CTHD,
but it is done more gracefully as if they're conducting ballet with
swords in the air.
Another part of Hero that imitates CTHD is in
the music score. It is not good that music from one film is almost
entirely used in another, especially if the two films share the
same kind of elements. The staccato drum score that everyone remembers
in CTHD is revitilised here in Hero almost to a beat, and I think
that draws attention for comparison. Why they couldn't have used
a different score?
The cinematography here easily rivals that of
CTHD and even surpasses it on several occasions, especially in the
use of locations and set-designs. There are also thousands of extras
added to give an epic feel to the film, and the scene where Broken
Sword and Flying Snow fight thousands of soldiers in a bid to assassinate
the king is a sight to behold.
At 100 minutes long, Hero runs about twenty minutes
shorter than CTHD, but at times I felt Hero dragged along for too
long, especially since scenes are told again and again. This may
be a clever plot device to keep the audience guessing as to the
outcome of the film, but I thought they could've used different
ideas than recycling the same scenes over and over. One disappointment
is that Donnie Yen is in only one scene, and that is at the beginning
of the film where he fights some imperial guards and Jet Li. There
is no sign of him afterwards, and I thought that was a waste. I
still rate the fights between Donnie and Jet in Once Upon a Time
in China 2 as one of the best around. Here, it is stunning, but
not breathtaking.
Performances are pretty much top-notch here with
the main actors giving their best. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung
have acted in arthouse movies before and you can clearly see they
have their experience behind in their acting. Jet Li, Donnie Yen
and Zhang Ziyi give marginally all right performances, with Li the
better of the three simply because Li has more on-screen time. Although
the lot of them cannot better the excellent perfomance by Chen Dao
Ming who plays the king. I've seen Chen portray Emperor Kangxi in
the TV series Kangxi Dynasty so I happen to know that he is a great
actor, but his performance here is even better. Much kudos for Zhang
Yimou for getting so much from his actors.
There are a lot of messages hidden in the
film of deep meaning, like giving up one's goal for the greater
good of mankind etc. but I'm not going to talk about those. For
me, does Hero pass as great entertainment? In a way, yes, it offers
plenty of thrills for my money, but ultimately the story arcs are
too bland to be satisfactory, and some of the swordfights are too
arty for my taste. It's still a feast for the eyes, but you will
be hungry for more.
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