Zhang Yimou's film takes the action-adventure template and adds some meaty drama, giving the actors more to do between fight scenes.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published August 26, 2004
[Miramax Films]
Maggie Cheung, as an assassin, is one of several three-dimensional characters in Hero, which will inevitably be compared with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
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Some Asian film buffs scoffed when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon captivated U.S. audiences four years ago. The fight scenes were worthy of China's wu xia action genre, they believed, but the drama was more worthy of a comic book. Zhang Yimou's Hero is more like what those critics have in mind.
Zhang's previous films (Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) depended on emotions more than violence. That quality adds another dimension to Hero beyond its gravity-defying action and dynamic visuals. More than lives and honor are at stake; there's also history portrayed as myth, populated by characters with personal goals to reach between battles. Hero can be described only as that most impressive movie contradiction: an intimate epic.
The film is set in third century A.D. China in the kingdom of Qin, ruled by an iron-fisted king (Daoming Chen). Radicals want him assassinated, hiring the three deadliest killers around to do the job. The king puts a bounty on their heads, but so far, nobody has been skilled enough to earn it.
That changes with the arrival of a nameless swordsman (Jet Li) claiming to have eliminated the killer trio. He is brought before the king, but no closer than 100 paces away. Through flashbacks, the warrior tells how he killed each assassin; he is allowed to move a few feet closer with each tale. He may be moving into position to kill the king, or the king may be luring the anonymous hero into a trap. Soon, the ruler tells the swordsman how he believes events occurred, toying with the audience's conclusions and revealing human nature, as movies and warfare do.
Much of Hero relies on that nature, spelled out with unusually literate dialogue for such a story, making it more of an actors exercise than typical martial arts adventure. The performers are up to the task, with revered Asian stars Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Donnie Yen forming a formidable (and emotionally strained) trio of assassins. Li's physical command of the screen isn't a surprise, but he has seldom had such rich material to play between brawls.
Zhang creates memorable sights during those fights, from Li piercing through raindrops in ultra-slow motion to hails of arrows fired by the king's army into a calligraphy school. The horror of that scene, the collateral damage inflicted in the name of political stability, is one of several moments when the period drama takes on contemporary meaning.
Christopher Doyle's cinematography is gorgeous, using color filters to express points of view. Tan Dun's musical score matches his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Comparisons with that film are inevitable, and in many respects, they favor Zhang's film.
