Art-house fave Zhang Yimou offered up his gorgeous, meditative entry, ‘Hero,’ into the martial-arts genre headlined by Jet Li in an obvious bid to out wuxia Ang Lee who met enormous success with ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ the year before. Visually, the film is perfect for a Blu-ray release and despite some audio shortcomings comes recommended.
The most expensive Chinese production at the time (costing a comparatively whopping 30 million), savvy Chinese stars Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi all signed up to give the film considerable star power with Yimou returning to the spotlight after a series of low-key smaller pics.
Disappointing for some martial-arts aficionados, the martial-arts in this pic is almost beside the point and outside of one exception can’t compare to the careful choreography of any number of past classics of the genre. The Jet Li – Donnie Yen match-up, the most exciting fight in the pic, comes early in the pic and is over way too quick for fans such as myself who were hoping for a fight to rival their previous pairing in ‘Once Upon a Time in China 2’.
Amazingly set-up though and the visual sumptuousness of the pic will likely make you forget any shortcomings in the action. The narrative is deceptively simple: During the period of King Qin who sets out to unite China, three legendary almost mythical assassins exist to resist King Qin’s efforts. Despite ample rewards, no one dared to challenge the legendary swordsmen until a local sheriff figured out a devious plot to find out and exploit their weaknesses.
The film opens with the swordsmen dead and nameless (Jet Li) showing up to receive his reward of taking up company with the King (Chen Daoming). Able to approach within 10 paces of the King, the King inquires of his methods of killing the swordsmen with nameless all too happy to recount the events, now told in flashback.
First up is how he came kill to kill Sky (Donnie Yen) in one of the film’s best scenes (and the one scene that genre fans can point to as recommended watching) as they pair off in a teahouse courtyard with pouring rain and the pangs of an aging musician with nameless even pausing in the fight to pay the musician for another song.
Little conniving is done here with nameless evidently superior in fight skills (both men close their eyes and play out how the fight will proceed in their minds, alluding to the game of Chess Sky was playing before nameless showed up) but nameless will have to plan accordingly to take down Broken Sword and Flying Snow, partners who take residence at a calligraphy school.
Exploiting their weaknesses as lovers, nameless shows up to break the news of Sky’s death and a message from Sky to Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) that is all too telling.
Broken Sword (Tony Leung) doesn’t take the news too well and immediately falls into bed with his maid Moon (Zhang Ziyi) who is clearly in love with her master. After personal dealings that end up in death, nameless now has an easier duel with the last assassin due to rattled emotions.
Done with his story, the King of Qin rejects the sheriff’s version of the events and begins to offer up his own version of what happened with the story now taking on a distinct ‘Rashomon’ type vibe with the varying versions all getting their own color schemes and lighting. As the truth begins to take light, both characters have to decide how they will deal with it.
Less crowd-pleasing and emotionally effective than ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, ‘Hero’ is still an enormous accomplishment of tone and achieves a type of visual poetry. While the action rarely impresses, the lensing and combination of perfect locations, set and costume design as well as subtly beautiful CGI indisputably does with scenes such as Flying Snow and Moon’s showdown in a autumnal forest and nameless and Broken Swords fight over the surface of a shimmering, mountain-set lake being exquisite examples.
Zhang Yimou seemed to want an emotionally distant tone to the fights but had he had wanted to add a real sense of danger and tension to the fights, ‘Hero’ could have easily been a landmark film for the genre.
This emotional distance also translates to the cast who never seem to get the perfect sequence to stand out – Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung so perfect in Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ are a far cry from that chemistry and Jet Li and Donnie Yen have little to do but show off their perfect forms of martial arts.
The 2.35:1 AVC 1080p encode isn’t perfect but is a considerable step up from the DVD with nice detail and color but maybe just a touch too much grain. The film looks inherently soft despite the importance of color and location but the transfer could do little about that.
As is typical for the four martial-arts pics released on Blu-ray by Disney, someone clearly didn’t have a clue about the demographics of these pics as ‘Hero’ also suffers the curse of the lossless dub track i.e. the horrendous dub track gets the priority over the Dolby Digital Chinese aud track. The Dolby Digital track is fine but not we’ve come to expect from high-def releases.
Special Features include one Blu-ray exclusive featurette, ‘Close-up of a Fight Scene’ that runs a scant nine minutes with the rest of the features being carried over from the DVD. ‘Hero Defined’ is a half-hour making of that doesn’t offer up much of interest.
Better is the ‘Inside the Action: A Conversation with Quentin Tarantino and Jet Li’ interview that lasts about 14-minutes and goes a little into Jet Li’s career. ‘Storyboards’, ‘Soundtrack Spot’ and a digital copy of the pic finish things off.
Despite slight reservations about the film and the tech specs of the Blu-ray, this still proves an easy recommend for fans of the genre and Jet Li and provides a nice bookend to Yimou’s follow-up pics ‘House of Flying Daggers’ and ‘Curse of the Golden Flower’ which have already received a Blu release from Sony.
Hero [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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