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Movie Review: Hero
By William Sternman
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Hero
Starring Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and Maggie Cheung
Directed by Yimou Zhang
Written by Feng Li and Bin Wang
In
the interest of full disclosure (but not full frontal disclosure;
after all, I’m not Colin Farrell), I have to reveal that I’m
one of only eight people in the entire Western Hemisphere (excluding Peru,
which refused to take part in this survey) who didn’t like Crouching
Tiger, Leaping Lizards, or whatever Ang Lee’s swordplay-in-the-sky
epic was called.
Full disclosure also requires I tell you that I refuse to celebrate Akira Kurosawa’s internationally celebrated Rashômon (1950), although I do celebrate his definition of an artist as someone who ”never averts his eyes.“
Why am I walking barefoot and bleeding to Canterbury to do penance for my sins?
Because Yimou Zhang’s latest film (he also directed Raise the Red Lantern, 1992) has been compared to both movies.
The comparison to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) is obvious: both rely heavily on ethereal sword fights in midair, for example. These stylized balletic duels are lovely to look at, but, let’s face it—enough is enough already. (Full disclosure further demands I confess that, except for The Red Shoes and An American in Paris I’m not much of a ballet fan either.) After all, when you’ve seen one car chase, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
In movies like The Ice Storm (1997), Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), Ang Lee proved that he could direct movies about real people we can care for. In Crouching Tiger, however, real people would only get in the way of the celestial acrobatics. What is needed—and provided—is mere stick figures that can leap into the air at a moment’s notice. Such is also the case in Hero.
Feng Li, Bin Wang and Yimou Zhang’s script for Hero tells the same story from several points of view. Each version is different from the others, reflecting the prejudice of the teller and proving once more that reality is in the eye of the beholder.
But do we really need to be told this truism again? Just compare George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld’s takes on Iraq with those of Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel or John McCain and you’ll know all you need to know about the subjectivity of reality. (I had a similar who’d’ve-thunk-it reaction to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Crimes and Misdemeanors. So the evildoers get off scot-free while good people get dumped on. So what else is new? Clare Boothe Luce got it right when she proclaimed, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Thanks, Clare! We needed that. Still do.)
Hero’s plotline is simple to the point of simplemindedness. Set two thousand years ago, the King of Qin (Chen Dao Ming) is determined to beat out his six rivals to become the first Emperor of a united China. But first he must defeat the three assassins hired by those rivals—Broken Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Sky (Donnie Yen). Qin offers a fabulous reward for their deaths and Nameless (Jet Li) comes to claim it. His proof is a series of stories nesting one within the other like a Matryoshka doll. Are Nameless’s stories true—or has he come to kill Qin himself?
These fairy-tale-like narratives are as stunning to look at as they are stupefying to follow. A feast for the eye; a fast for the mind. They might have been easier to take had Hero been produced as an animated cartoon feature. As it was, the mind of this materialistic Westerner kept wandering, losing track, becoming confused.
The sparse dialogue is as mind-numbingly declamatory and unsubtle as political oratory or operatic aria. There are, for example, many flowery comparisons of dueling to calligraphy. The clear subtitles make it all very easy to read. More’s the pity.
What my mind needs to anchor it to a movie is real people I can identify with and whose lives and emotions I can share, not lifeless symbols that are as cryptic and uninvolving as paintings on an Egyptian tomb wall or figures in a parable.
The fault may very well be mine. I would never deny it. But, as Luther said, “Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen!”
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
©
2004 Me Three