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Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Title: Hero [Ying Xiong ]
Cast: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Daoming Chen, Donnie Yen
Director: Yimou Zhang



It seems a little strange that it has taken so long for something that works off of the success of 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But then, it makes even little sense to think that Hero is a couple of years old, and that even with it’s pedigree it took the intervention of Quentin Tarantino before it was given a chance at proper distribution. Surely I’m not the only person to think that is madness?

Hero comes from the same producer as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, stars Zhang Ziyi who was one of that films leads, and includes a soundtrack by Tan Dun, who also worked on Crouching Tiger. The fact that the cast then adds Jet Li, and Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, along with the direction by Yimou Zhang and cinematography of Christopher Doyle, should for me have been a guarantee for distribution. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have been enough, though now that it has had a release in the US and UK it is proving it’s worth.

The one downside of Hero is the expectation that it should be as sprawling and epic as Crouching Tiger. Which it isn’t, instead it is a much more focussed film, concentrating on cranking up the visual/design work in a format more reminiscent of a film like Run, Lola, Run. Set at a time before there was a China, there are a number of states, which a violent warlord seeks to unite under his rule. This warlord has not slept for three years, from when assassins from the neighbouring state made an attempt on his life. The film starts with the arrival of Jet Li, as a nameless warrior, who claims to have killed the three assassins for his leader. So impressed by this the warlord allows Jet Li unprecedented access, in order to tell him the story of how he killed these assassins.

The nameless warrior and the leader sit together, while the story of how he got close to each of the three assassins, and found some way to kill them unfolds. During the telling the warlord comes to a realisation, the nameless warrior is lying to him. So at the end of the story he challenges the warrior, re-telling the story in the way that he suspects things really happened. Confronted as a liar, the warrior admits his first version of events was not entirely right, but neither is the warlords, so he sets about explaining the truth, so the story is told for a third time. Each version of the story is different, not only from the slight details of events, but also on every level – the clothing, the scenery, and who fights who. The results are breathtaking, the intense use of colour really enriching the top class choreography and combining that with a use of environment which enhances both the colour and the conflict.

The performances by some of China’s top actors imbue Hero with a human and emotive driving force. Hero is a beautiful film, rich with compositional detail, in both a visual and sound sense – such that it will be well worth watching repeatedly.

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