Salocin

Hero

Hero (or Ying xiong) is dated 2002, according to IMDB. No doubt due to the staggered release dates used by studios to maximize revenues, I only saw it recently. I was expecting great things - IMDB have rated it 8.2 out of 10, and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 94%. Based on this, I was expecting a visual feast, poetry, story and above all - that it be accessible to all audiences. While I loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I felt that it came a bit close to being overly enamored of its own visuals at times. This film crosses that line, and in defiance of pretty much all of the reviews I've read, I'm going to say that I didn't enjoy it all that much.

Jet Li is Nameless, a master swordsman who, after 10 years of training, defeated 3 assassins who sought to murder China's greatest warlord. As a consequence of this achievement, he is granted an audience with the warlord, and the film is a series of flashbacks to the battles between the swordsman and the assassins, narrated through the conversation between himself and the warlord. It is apparently the retelling of a Chinese legend, and a decent story in its own right.

Unfortunately, it is not a story that can carry a 2-hour film. At best, it could have managed 45 minutes. The rest is filled with visuals and drawn-out combat sequences.

When I decided to watch the film, I was aware that what I would see would be more art than substance, and I was therefore prepared for the lack of story. Unfortunately, there is a higher standard to art than there is to action movies, and by attempting this, the film set itself a difficult task, which in my opinion it failed to completely achieve. There has to be more to art than a woman holding a sword, dressed in flowing silk, standing in the desert. The visuals, while pretty, often seemed facile, and having decided to make it art rather than story, the mysticism implied by much of the dialogue (entire battles happen spiritually, with two opponents facing each other and the fight happening in their imaginations) seems misplaced, and was that little bit too much to ask of me as a viewer.

When a film that breaks the mould gets reviewer ratings in the 90% range, one of two things is happening: Either the film is truly groundbreaking, and we are in for a real treat, or the film is different, and while some people may truly love it, a crowd effect causes each successive reviewer to rate it highly so as to prove that they too can appreciate this new art form. Unfortunately in this case, the ground was broken by Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hero falls through the cracks.