Jet Propelled
Don’t confuse Hero with 1992’s dusty Dustin Hoffman vehicle or with the epic Bollywood musical espionage extravaganza Hero: Love Story of a Spy (though that’s worth a mind-altering look if you can find it). America and India aren’t directly involved here, but huge imperial issues nonetheless loom large, and it’s up to martial-arts superstar Jet Li, playing a ranger named Nameless, to swoop around and fulfill both his own destiny and that of China.
Our story, a mixture of history and folk tale, unfurls about 2 millennia ago, back when some carpenter from Jerusalem was also having a rough go of things. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet, a messiah of sorts has emerged in the form of orphaned, wandering Nameless, whose awesome strength and ultimate humility are bound to transform his land and its people. A good thing, too, because the extremely loud, power-mad King of Qin (Chen Daoming) plans to overtake all seven kingdoms of what will become China. The movie’s opening text rings eerily familiar: “It was an idea soaked in the blood of his enemies.”
Obviously, this sort of policy will render a leader unpopular among some, and thus emerge three assassins, the macho Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, In the Mood for Love); the female but equally macho Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, ditto); and the male, almost-as-macho Sky (Donnie Yen, Iron Monkey). They want their lands preserved and the king dead, but this will prove quite a trick — the king rules from a massive palace with enormous locked gates, surrounded by incalculable sorties of warriors armed to the teeth with endless stacks of pointy things.
The tale is told largely in flashback by Nameless, who has conquered the three assassins and been granted an audience with the king. Presenting to him the killers’ weapons to prove his mission accomplished, Nameless is duly rewarded with raised status and measures of gold. He sits before the king to tell his story and is allowed to advance several paces with the revelation of each victory. And he, too, has an agenda.
Director Zhang Yimou (The Road Home) embarks upon his own quest here, which is to dazzle our eyes while delivering a deceptively simple morality play. No chop-socky movie this — the choreography and wire work of the duels and stunts amount to sheer visual poetry.
Comparisons to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are inevitable (it also begs comparison to The Bride With White Hair), but you may as well liken Home Fries to Good Burger. Despite these mythic movies’ similar trappings (the gobsmacking stunts, the muted sexual tension, the archaic settings, even the adorable shared star Zhang Ziyi as Broken Sword’s feisty assistant), Hero keeps its characters stiffly archetypal, like chess pieces sent whizzing through outrageous maneuvers. Unfortunately, this apparent choice of spectacle over intimacy put me at a slight remove. Itzhak Perlman’s ceaseless, plaintive fiddling over Tan Dun’s score didn’t help, either.
But if the creators mean to evoke our collective humanity with gorgeous, if somewhat cold (and weirdly bloodless), confrontations, they score. Stunning feats of dexterity within lavishly appointed sets are juxtaposed with glorious outdoor tableaux — a female standoff amid rushing, roaring yellow leaves is particularly beautiful and strange. The tactile and spiritual parallels between the disciplines of calligraphy and swordplay are vividly illustrated as deafening storms of invaders’ huge black arrows explode into a humble schoolhouse while the students keep on writing. Rife with time-altering effects, fluttering banners, lovely costumes from Emi Wada (Ran), the film’s lavish delivery nearly overtakes its central theme.
But not quite. Just when the pageantry is peaking, when one more clever slash would be one too many, Hero reaches moving, almost shocking closure for our principal players, particularly Nameless. He earns the film’s title, but first he delivers a very resonant line: “The quarrel between our kingdoms is as nothing when compared to peace for all.” Gotta like that.
