East Infection
To fear or mistrust anything with a relative amount of hype is such a film geek kneejerk response -- that is, if filmgeeks could jerk anything below crotch height. Being one of this race of Hutt-like virgins, researching Hero agitated the fat around my heart and made my nerd sense tingle. Everyone that wasn't billing it as the next Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which is Hollywood-ese for 'the only successful foreign film with Asians on strings we can think of' ) was actually bothering to come up with new metaphors to describe it. In a good way. And how could it not be? America has proven itself time and again that it has no idea how to handle Asia's action exports other than to stick the poor gal or guy with a roundeye chaperone, so it's only fair that the originators keep these sucka MCs from bitin' their tiger style. At last, I was getting my wish - that Asian actors return to their roots and show these kung-fu clowns how it's done. Zhang Ziyi and the marvelously aged Maggie Cheung have admirable sets of reasons to see this film, but the fact that it's not just another Jet Li crash with DMX in the copilot's seat was intriguing enough to investigate. However, my silver lining of hope had a cloud within it. Subsequent interviews revealed the cast and crew to either have the worst translator since Sacagewea told her tribe that the white man meant peace, or they were the most self-important bunch outside the set of the Star Wars prequels. Naturally a film's cast and crew will engage in embarrassing group fellatio upon describing their current project, but the insistance that this movie was high concept art as opposed to another kung-pow Peter Pan seemed especially blowhard. The director himself was the worst culprit, proclaiming that he wanted to make something landmark. That phrase has become a warning sign in itself, as I can conjure to mind many other filmmakers who've certainly left their mark with work that scars the landscape of cinema irreparably. It was this dualistic mindset I took into Hero.

Origin Story

Oh, just kiss already!

The film is a legend brought to life; only in a fairy tale could you get away with giving main characters such wannabe hippie Hopi Indian names. Jet Li plays Nameless. That's right, a man named Nameless. Make sure to ask someone to clean up the mess when your head explodes from that insane paradox. Nameless is a renowned swordsman summoned to the court of the Emperor of Qin for slaying 3 assassins that had tried to violently checkmate the king. Making his way to the palace and past rows of the Emperor's stormtroopers, he recieves an audience with the big kahuna, and with great pomp and circumstance he spins his tale of felling Sky (Donnie Yen), and ex-poonpals Falling Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), to deliver each one's weapon to His Majesty. However, the Emperor's not buying those new clothes, and proceeds to tell his idea of what he thinks happened. The flick's longevity is spun from these POVs of the relatively short main plot, throwing Nameless' testimony and motives into doubt. The real question is, will you want to stick around long enough to find out the end to The Usual Shaolin Suspects?

You Can See The Strings

Jet is confronted by fans who want a refund for Cradle 2 The Grave.

Several features of the film factor into the audience's staying power, the most notably being whether wushu's right for you. If you are on the fence about wire-fu, Hero will shove you clean over onto either side. The sheer amount will grate or seem great, but one can't deny the competence and artistry involved in the fight scenes. Nowadays when even Stifler, George McFly and the ex-Mrs. Tom Green are running up walls and flash-kicking foes, it helps to have a bit of distinction and weight. And Hero's got plenty of gravitas to bring its aerial acrobatics down to earth. Zhang Ziyi as Broken Sword's Running Dog lackey/consort may seem a reprise of CTHD's cocksure Jen, for instance, but in this case she's sure about wanting Broken Sword to break her off. However, BS and most of the audience will be losing their shit over Maggie Cheung. The woman is radiant, and would drain my thesaurus were I trying to conjure up other adjectives. Suffice it to say she's come a long way from fighting a rubber skeleton piggybacking on Michelle Yeoh in The Heroic Trio. However, you'll find that the surprisingly small main cast and the thousands of extras blend into the most omnipresent part of the film - the settings. The director prides himself on his ridiculous -- excuse me, meticulous color coded combat arenas for the halls of memory that these characters do battle in. Some of these Crayola clashes work wonders although cribbing off one another at points, like the first fight in the rain with Jet and Donnie, or the leaf-blowing battle between Maggie and Zhang. However, there's a scene between most of the principal cast that I certainly hope you like, because you'll be seeing a lot of it. It's played no less than 3 times, in 3 different colors (red, white, and blue, the cleverest subliminal advertising outside Josie and the Pussycats) that becomes progressively more elaborate and yet somehow harder to sit through with each appearance.

Hero Sandwich

If only yard work were this sexy.

It's this final conflict that personifies the feature. While I'm sure there was a lot of work involved, what is there seems as effortless and straightforward as the puppeteered people gliding through the air onscreen. Certain scenes burst with empathy (like Crouching Tiger, this wushu ends in boohoo and huh? moments), but they're small oases between long treks of melodramatic plot development; hardly enough of a payoff, or even worth paying for. The Dances With Swords are nice, but once the jig is up and you're on to the movie's concept, you can pretty much predict the next steps of its tango across retreaded and retarded story territory. Maybe it's a byproduct of the feeling that nearly every action film's just a substitute teacher biding time until Neo and Co. hit theaters, but the only reason it seems people can fly so freely in this film is that it's entirely hollow. Reflecting back, the anti-Hero jaded cinesnob in me sneers for ever expecting something of a movie that shares titles with songs by Mariah Carey and Enrique Iglesias. For as much as I wanted to believe in this sword soap opera on strings, I have to say that in this case, weak becomes Hero. At least if you see this, you'll appear smarter than the folks who shelled out for Bulletproof Monk.