Director: Zhang Yimou, 2002
Stars: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung
Out to buy and rent: On DVD
Set in a China, circa 300BC, that’s riven by warring factions, Yimou’s ravishing epic takes Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’s arthouse kung-fu formula and runs with it. Yimou, whose background is in chamber pieces such as Raise the Red Lantern, aims to use fight sequences to drive his story rather than vice versa. And while his recent follow-up, House of Flying Daggers, is more romantic, there is still real emotional ballast in the loves, betrayals, triumphs and tragedies that befall Hero’s lithe stars. Certainly the shifting plot — which revisits events, Rashômon-style, from successive subjective viewpoints — is far more involving than the perfunctory narrative of the average martial arts flick.
But let’s not kid ourselves — it’s still the scraps that linger longest in the memory. Colour-coded and gracefully choreographed against exquisite landscapes, they come on like Bruce Lee dressed by Jean Paul Gaultier and photographed by National Geographic. Some sequences are over-egged, but two scenes — in which blue-clad warriors duel serenely above a glassy lake and scarlet-draped swordswomen square up amid maelstroms of golden leaves — are instant classics.
In the face of such sensual splendour, the DVD extras are bound to be a bit of a letdown. A workmanlike documentary does scant justice to the scale of Chinese cinema’s most expensive project — for Christopher Doyle, the infamously bibulous Australian cinematographer, the biggest challenge was finding a decent bar. Elsewhere, a conversation between Li and his martial arts-obsessed executive producer Quentin Tarantino just drums up platitudes.
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One refreshing deviation from the norm is Yimou’s lack of false modesty in interviews. He knows he has produced an enduring work of art, and he doesn’t refrain from saying so.
DVD extras “Making of” documentary, Jet Li and Quentin Tarantino in conversation, storyboards.
Ed Potton