With supernatural skill
and no fear, a nameless soldier (Jet Li) embarks on a mission of
revenge against the
fearsome army
that massacred his people. Now,
to achieve the
justice he
seeks, he must take on the empire's most ruthless assassins and
reach the
enemy he has sworn
to defeat!
CRITIQUE
The
best part about Hero is its visual epic beauty, photographed
magnificently by Christopher Doyle, and the terrific action sequences.
Director Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers) and his
collaborative team, such as the action director and the visual effects
crew, stage incredible sequences where the main character takes on
various assassins. Jet Li's nameless character fights the assassins
with his mind as well as with his hands, and a lot of the sword
fighting takes place in mid-air, which is obviously helped by
wire-work, but every action scene looks incredibly well choreographed
and edited. Visually, Hero is awesome.
However, in terms of
story, the script should have been improved. The basic story is that
Li's character enters King of Qin's palace with the intention to kill
him, but the King tries to figure out the reasons behind it, and along
the way discovers some surprising facts. Li narrates a good portion of
the film, describing his character's intentions and telling the viewer
of the events that preceded the present, such as meetings with other
assassins and how they were defeated. The film's story fleshes out
through all the flashbacks, but this narrative structure is also a bit
flawed. Hero relies too much on flashbacks, and because of this
some of the plot twists lack impact. The drama in the film works here
and there, but more often than not I did not care about the fate of
the characters.
The acting is quite
good, especially Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung who play assassins and
lovers Broken Sword and Flying Snow, respectively. The exception is
Jet Li, however. He looks too stale and his performance lacks any
emotion, even if his character is supposed to be cold. On the other
hand, Daoming Chen's performance as King of Qin is strong. Ziyi
Zhang's Moon doesn't impress much and is more eye candy than anything
else, although she knows how to fight. I liked Hero overall,
and recommend a viewing, but it should have improved a bit on the
story and characters. For this review I chose to watch the film in the
English language version, and surprisingly the presentation of the
dialogue and mouth movements is quite accurate.
THE VIDEO
Buena Vista presents Hero in 2.35:1
anamorphic widescreen. Colors look vibrant and clear, with interesting
saturation and sharpness. Parts of this presentation are flawed, such
as a bit of detail, more than several instances of grain, and various
little specks showing up in scenes. The majority of the presentation
is nice, however, and the film looks great on a big widescreen TV
overall.
THE AUDIO
Buena Vista presents Hero in English, French, and Original
Chinese Language tracks. The English 5.1 Dolby Digital presentation is
very nice, the dubbed dialogue is clear and easy to understand, and
also matches the mouth movements of the actors, which is kind of cool.
The sound effects come across very well, the sound of the swords
clashing, the sound of the wind, and other effects are presented
clearly. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.
THE EXTRAS
Hero Defined looks at the making of the film with a lot of
interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, although it's not highly
descriptive or in depth. It runs a little over twenty minutes and
covers some interesting topics, but I would have liked a segment on
the special effects and wire-work.
Inside the Action: A
Conversation with Quentin Tarantino and Jet Li is about what you
would expect. There's a lot of generous talk going on, comments about
the film, and so forth.
Rounding out the bonus
material is a Storyboards section.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hero is a visual epic and the story is mostly interesting, even
though the narrative structure is weak. The DVD extras are good, but
not highly descriptive or informing of the actual making-of process.
While not loaded, this DVD is a recommended rental, and fans of Asian
cinema might want to look into a purchase.
