Hero
September 27th, 2004
The story of Hero begins when Nameless, a minor prefect from an obscure province, shows up at the court of the king of Qin. The warlord of Qin is engaged in a bloody quest to conquer the other Chinese provinces and unite All Under Heaven. Nameless claims to have killed the three assassins who have made it their mission to kill the warlord of Qin. He bears the assassins’ weapons as evidence of his triumph, and is invited into the presence of the king to explain how he accomplished this astonishing feat. The story which Nameless relates is retold from a couple of different angles over the course of the film, as we are made to understand that there may be much more going on than we’d thought.
Director Zhang Yimou orchestrates a fabulously colourful, beautifully depicted story of love and hate and honour and deception which is a treat for the senses and the intellect. The amazing martial arts sequences are inevitably somewhat reminiscent of those in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that’s no bad thing: who could seriously complain at one more historical epic packed with spectacular and heart-stoppingly beautiful martial arts scenes?
You really should catch this film in a cinema rather than wait for the DVD. Sure, you’ll enjoy stepping frame-by-frame through some of the fight sequences to unravel exactly how what just happened went down, but you’ll miss out on the opportunity to see 30-foot tall versions of Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang throw themselves across the screen with abandon. Trust me, that would be a terrible shame.
September 28th, 2004 at 3:18 am
And make sure you catch The House of Flying Daggers (the next film from Zhang) when it hits the cinemas there! I saw this film in Tokyo about 3 weeks ago - beautiful! A visual masterpeice that is like a moving oil canvas. I wrote about it here
[Edited to fix broken URL. jr 28 Sep 2004]
September 28th, 2004 at 7:08 am
I’ll do that. (More Ziyi Zhang - how can I say no?)
Unfortunately, I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. Although it’s having a UK premiere at the London Film Festival next month that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll show up elsewhere in the UK any time soon. I can but hope that the distributors will have the sense to get it out there soon to capitalise on the success of Hero.