Flying Style, Broken Story
FOLLOWING in the footsteps of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou's Hero delivers the same visual punch, but fails at offering a human-scale drama.
Hero is, without a doubt, one of the most aesthetically beautiful movies of the year with fight scenes offered in dazzlingly balletic flights (literally) of fancy. The production design with its lush monochromatic color schemes of all green, red, blue, white or black in succession are a feast to the eyes.
Unfortunately, while the visual artistry is apparent, the story—though simple—is fairly weak following in Rashomon-esque fashion the hero Nameless (Jet Li)'s efforts to rid the kingdom of Qin and its ambitious king (Daoming Chen) of three troublesome assassins. The king—the target of numerous attempts on his life—is suspicious of the lowly Nameless' story and we see the same story told and retold three times until we get at the truth. However, there is little need to see these stories told so many times since the point of the movie is the conflict of an individual's need for revenge versus the good of the country, not, like the classic Rashomon, the difficulty of finding the truth. The assassins—Broken Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Sky (Donnie Yen)—each have a personal score to settle. The king simply wants to unify China, which will mean bloody hardship until peace comes.
Though the resolution is doctrinally Marxist, the premise that on both sides of this conflict are heroes is an intriguing one and shows the depth of Yimou and screenwriters Feng Li and Bin Wang's thought on the issue.
The problem with the presentation is with the flashback structure and the motivations of Nameless, which we don't learn until late in the movie and which ring a little hollow. The flashback stories lose interest with their spectacular but ultimately repetitious sword fights and are light on plot development except for the lovely, tumultuous romance between Broken Sword and Flying Snow.
Unfortunately short shrift is given to Broken Sword and Flying Snow—Hero's tragic, romantic center. Their conflict mirrors the one between themselves and the king, which would have humanized the movie's rather politically abstract message. The king of Qin, who is offered as a complex, well-meaning man who has to make hard choices in order to fulfill his dream of a unified land, is glossed over as well.
Though it fails at the strictly narrative level, Hero earns points for some stunning action sequences. An attack on the calligraphy school of Zhao is striking, and the fight between Flying Snow and Moon (Crouching Tiger's Zhang Ziyi) during the red sequence is a tour de force as is a later fight on a pond between Nameless and Broken Sword.
The acting is uniformly excellent with Leung and Chen turning in the best performances—both men are noble and tragic without wallowing in either self-pity or pathos.
Hero does not rise to the promise of its visual splendor, which unfortunately becomes window dressing in lieu of plot.
Hero is, without a doubt, one of the most aesthetically beautiful movies of the year with fight scenes offered in dazzlingly balletic flights (literally) of fancy. The production design with its lush monochromatic color schemes of all green, red, blue, white or black in succession are a feast to the eyes.
Unfortunately, while the visual artistry is apparent, the story—though simple—is fairly weak following in Rashomon-esque fashion the hero Nameless (Jet Li)'s efforts to rid the kingdom of Qin and its ambitious king (Daoming Chen) of three troublesome assassins. The king—the target of numerous attempts on his life—is suspicious of the lowly Nameless' story and we see the same story told and retold three times until we get at the truth. However, there is little need to see these stories told so many times since the point of the movie is the conflict of an individual's need for revenge versus the good of the country, not, like the classic Rashomon, the difficulty of finding the truth. The assassins—Broken Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Sky (Donnie Yen)—each have a personal score to settle. The king simply wants to unify China, which will mean bloody hardship until peace comes.
Though the resolution is doctrinally Marxist, the premise that on both sides of this conflict are heroes is an intriguing one and shows the depth of Yimou and screenwriters Feng Li and Bin Wang's thought on the issue.
The problem with the presentation is with the flashback structure and the motivations of Nameless, which we don't learn until late in the movie and which ring a little hollow. The flashback stories lose interest with their spectacular but ultimately repetitious sword fights and are light on plot development except for the lovely, tumultuous romance between Broken Sword and Flying Snow.
Unfortunately short shrift is given to Broken Sword and Flying Snow—Hero's tragic, romantic center. Their conflict mirrors the one between themselves and the king, which would have humanized the movie's rather politically abstract message. The king of Qin, who is offered as a complex, well-meaning man who has to make hard choices in order to fulfill his dream of a unified land, is glossed over as well.
Though it fails at the strictly narrative level, Hero earns points for some stunning action sequences. An attack on the calligraphy school of Zhao is striking, and the fight between Flying Snow and Moon (Crouching Tiger's Zhang Ziyi) during the red sequence is a tour de force as is a later fight on a pond between Nameless and Broken Sword.
The acting is uniformly excellent with Leung and Chen turning in the best performances—both men are noble and tragic without wallowing in either self-pity or pathos.
Hero does not rise to the promise of its visual splendor, which unfortunately becomes window dressing in lieu of plot.
