Zhang Yimou’s new film, Hero, is without doubt the most beautiful martial-arts film ever made. The sets are stunning, the cast is attractive. It’s a sumptuous visual treat, as you would expect from the director of Raise the Red Lantern and his celebrated cinematographer, Christopher Doyle. Yet something’s missing. Why am I not in love?
Could it be the story? It is set in China, 2,000 years ago. A small-town county sheriff called Nameless (Jet Li) has arrived for a private audience before the King of Qin (Chen Daoming). In a stunning opening scene, Yimou shows us a vast imperial guard, which parts before Nameless like a sea of synchronised ants. Here is the unified, hierarchical and disciplined China that the King of Qin wants to create out of seven warring kingdoms.
In trying to become the Emperor of all China, the King of Qin has made a few enemies on the way. The most famous and fearsome of the lot are Sky (Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and his lover, Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung). They are A-team assassins, a Tarantino wet dream. In fact, this film could have been called Kill Qin, which doesn’t quite have the ring of Kill Bill.
Once you see Zhang’s film, however, you realise what an ordinary stir-fry western of a film Kill Bill was. The King of Qin has promised not only great wealth to anyone who rids him of these turbulent killers, but an audience before him. Nameless turns up with the swords of these three dead assassins to collect his prizes. So he sits alone before the king and tells the story of how he took them out one by one. With each story, Nameless is given more gold and allowed to move closer to the king, until he’s just 10 paces away from him. The king listens to these tales and realises that the hero who sits before him is not quite what he seems ― what follows is another series of stories. This structure of stories within stories brings to mind Rashomon, which I always thought was a Jewish holiday until I saw the Kuro- sawa film.
No, the plot is fine by me. The central weakness is not the story, nor the awful outfits the men always wear in these films ― it’s the characters. They are like characters from comic books, but without the tights. They fly. They are faster than a speeding bullet. They have honour, principles, dignity, discipline. But hello, where is the personality? (Say what you will about the limits of bourgeois individualism, it makes for better film characters.)
You never have an emotional bond with these people. There is no sense of intimacy, nor means of empathy. When did you last hear a martial-arts hero say something that made you think: yes, I know that feeling? Nameless is an appropriate name for one with no personality. Come on, be honest, does anyone really care what happens to Arrow, Sky, Snow, Rock, Scissors, Paper or whoever it is getting diced and sliced?
Consequently, the emotional heart of the story ― the romance between Flying Snow and Broken Sword ― never ignites nor smoulders in the way it did when we saw Leung and Cheung in In the Mood for Love. Their tragedy is staged with such stylised exquisiteness that all the life of their love is smothered to death.
Even so, Hero, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is a martial-arts film that will appeal to an art-house audience. Its violence is refined, cerebral. Hero says that sword fights are more like calli-graphy than butchery. Okay, if the pen/brush is really mightier than the sword, why didn’t Zhang do a martial-arts film featuring char-acters exchanging bons mots and witty one-liners as they fly through the air?
This is a violent movie that preaches against violence. Both Broken Sword and Nameless (this echoing Eastwood’s Man with No Name) are cowboy gunslingers who discover the futility of violence ― yet they spend most of the film killing people. We are meant to admire the balletic nature of the sword fights and debate the meaning of heroism
It's really glib, not much substance except a few one-line zingers (such as Tarentino's wet dream and Roshamon) to show off how clever he is. 华盛顿时报的影评也不粉喜欢这片，但写得有分寸有内容。 也幸好张以莫重份量导演一粒不需理睬这类的影评。 This critics just sound like he/she hasn't been getting any.