HERO
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: China tries to make its own CROUCHING TIGER
with a story of an enigmatic stranger who has killed
a triad of assassins for the benefit of China's first
Emperor. The stranger tells the emperor multiple
versions of how he killed the emperor's enemies.
Visually HERO is stunning. The telling is operatic in
style but becomes muddled. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4)
or 8/10
In the last half of the 20th century China saw Japan study American
culture and then move in to compete with us in technical, economic, and
artistic fields. China has made tremendous strides in many of the same
directions. Much more than in the past they are now vying for the
international cinema market, not just with artistic films, but with
entertainment films also. I expect that in the near future we will see
more Chinese films intended not to show us something edifying, like
Chinese village life, but more to entertain and even impress. HERO is
one such film.
HERO is the most expensive film ever made in mainland China. It is
historical spectacle, but in the mold of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.
It has jaw-dropping art direction and martial arts that still astound,
even making allowances for the obvious assistance of wires.
In the Third Century B.C. what we now call China was a patchwork of
kingdoms. Qin Shih Huang-ti, the ruthless king of the Qin fought to
conquer all the other kings and to make himself the first Emperor of all
China. That much is history. In this tale his greatest danger lay came
from a team of three superb assassins who had sworn to kill him. Then
suddenly they were gone, killed by a lowly prefect from one of the
king's provinces. This man (Jet Li) is of such low origins he does not
even have a real name and is called Nameless. Nameless is taken in
pageantry to have an audience with the future Emperor and to tell him
how he accomplished the deed. But the king recognizes that he is being
lied to so Nameless gives several very different accounts. Is Nameless
merely working on a different plot to kill the king?
HERO combines the fantasized martial arts of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN
DRAGON with some of the same history from the under-rated THE EMPEROR
AND THE ASSASSIN. It has neither the rousing adventure of CROUCHING
TIGER nor the historical epic sweep of THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN.
But the visual style of production designers Huo Ting Xiao and Yi Zhen
Zhou and cinematographer Christopher Doyle makes this one of the most
beautiful films that has been seen on American screens in quite a while.
Director Zhang Yimou has been more known for beautiful and contemplative
films such as RAISE THE RED LANTERN. He has shown, among other things,
that he likes playing with color. In this film that taste turns into
full-blown passion. Some scenes will have so much of one color that
they almost look like tinted monochrome. In others he will have the
entire scene in one tone and the two main characters in another color so
they stand out. The colors are specifically chosen each to represent a
given mood. As Nameless tells his tales he keeps returning to a
mystical connection between beautiful calligraphy and swordplay.
HERO will break the rules of physics but never the rules of the Chinese
cinema. With its strong and heavily stylized action scenes, this film
is like KILL BILL in overdrive. Zhang Yimou avoids showing us any human
stained with blood in keeping with the Chinese sensibility. Though the
plot involves sex there is just one quick flash of partial nudity. Like
CROUCHING TIGER there is plenty of violence but it is choreographed more
like high-speed ballet. It is easy to see how this became the most
expensive film in Chinese history. Zhang Yimou may use CGI to show a
storm of arrows or vortexes of golden leaves, but unlike Peter Jackson
he never seems to use a computer image of a human in lieu of a real
human. When he shows us a huge army of soldiers it looks like it is
played by a huge army of people. It might be politically incorrect to
use a computer image rather than employing an actor.
That said the producers were not afraid to borrow talent from other
lands. Tan Dun provided the musical score as he had with CROUCHING
TIGER. It is a little strange to see a credit for violin and fiddle
solos performed by Itzhak Perlman. A few western names do show up in
the credits.
Some of the story may seem obscure to American audiences, but in this
film the visual style is much more important than the actual plot. This
is a case where it might have been better to dub carefully than to
subtitle. I had to let several subtitles go unread to appreciate the
images above them on the screen. This film is not the entertainment
that THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN was, but it certainly is a film that
can be appreciated by wide audiences. I give HERO a high +2 on the -4
to +4 scale or 8/10.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38563 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1314593 X-RT-TitleID: 1131781 X-RT-AuthorID: 1309 X-RT-RatingText: 8/10
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