Reviews

First of all, I AM CHINESE. Note that this is pretty important to what I'm about to say. I hope to comment on this film from a Chinese point of view. ALSO: **WARNING** SOME SPOILERS CONTAINED.

1. I am proud of the cinematography of this film. Usually you won't find a Chinese film as breathtaking as your average Hollywood blockbuster, but Hero is an exception. It is by far the most beautiful martial arts film yet, and when I say this I mean both the kung-fu and the scenery. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's kung-fu scenes are pretty boring in my eyes. It was a bit of a shame that the best kung-fu scene was put at the beginning, where two great kung-fu "artists" Jet Li and Donnie Yen fight. These two actors really know kung-fu, thus the fighting is the best to watch, although it isn't as visually stunning as some later scenes (like the one when the leaves changes colour).

2. I am aware that some western audiences are still not accustomed to kung-fu scenes that defy gravity and other basic physics lawss. This is a bit culturally related. For example, a lot of Chinese people aren't really interested in The Lord Of the Rings. They don't really believe that there could be magical forces, goblins, elves and etc. On the other hand, we do believe that ancient kung-fu masters could "fly" and so on, and hence we make films like that. Hero is mild in these areas. A lot of kung-fu films nowadays has swordsmen sending out "laser beams" with their hands of swords. It's just to make the fighting look more intense and exciting.

3. The plot of Hero, and the message that it tries to concieve (that the true hero should sacrifice himself for peace, for the country and blah blah blah) is too ancient to really arouse interest in Chinese audiences. This theme has been told too many times before in kung-fu (wuxia) novels, and basically anybody who loves wuxia novels knows it. Therefore Hero received a lot of criticism for its pale storyline. And telling the story three times in a little more than 90 minutes is both rather dumb and unrealistic. There's hardly any depth. And also the dialogues are too poorly written. There are basic mistakes like the emperor saying the chinese word for "peace", which is impossible, because at that time in history there was no such word as the one he used. Things like that really let this film down.

3.5 I am going to expand a bit on the pale storyline. Maybe fellow IMDBers don't agree with me. That's perfectly normal. The difference is still in the culture. Like I said, because nearly every Chinese knows this theme, therefore to tell it in a very simple way would seem (to us Chinese) silly; whereas other audiences who aren't familiar with the background and the theme will find it fascinating. Modern Wuxia that attracts Chinese audiences would seem totally inunderstandable from the average foreign audience's point of view, because you don't know all the background info that the film assumes you do.

4. A bit on the actors. It might be interesting to fellow IMDBers to know that Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung were sort of joked at for their bad Mandarin. It was kind of funny. The way Daoming Chen said his lines were also a bit too theatre like, as if he was performing a play and not a film.

5. By now you'll probably thinking why I am criticizing the film so much. I think that what really affected Hero from being a classic is that it cares too much about looks and forgot to tell a decent story. It's a beautiful film, but nothing more, and that's a shame, because with such a cast and such a director there could have been a lot more. Yet I'm still proud of Hero as a Chinese, because I think we need to make some commercial films like Hero, as the current film industry in China isn't really booming. Anyway, Hero, with all its faults, still won a landslide victory at the Chinese box-office. And that's really important. But if you're interested in some real kung-fu films, I recommend films like New Dragon Gate Inn(made in the 1990s, and one of my favourite wuxia films) and some of Jet Li's earlier series. They are both enjoyable and interesting.