Hero

Here i am, ready to get owned....as usual......sign, FML
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This film is directed by Zhang Yimou, who also did “House of Flying Dagger” and “Curse of the Golden Flower”, so if you know anything about this man, it’s going to be full of absurdly good-looking people wearing extremely bright and elaborate clothing randomly trying to kill each other in absurdly exaggerated fight scenes that resemble dances more than actual fights, and Hero is no different. The story takes place in Ancient China during the Warring States period, which for those who don’t know, was basically a three hundred year period where China was in a massive state of Civil war, with every single minor kingdom in China starting fighting it out. Think Dark Age Europe, but more culturally advanced. After a few hundred years of this, the land was divided into seven kingdoms that started to slowly dominate the political landscape, until one of them, Qin, dominated the other six, and unified all of Northern China, with the largest Chinese unification to date, led by the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, who was, speaking frankly, a bit of a psychopath, infamous for torturing and murdering about a million people (back in the BCE era, that means a lot) and burning books, before eventually killing himself via mercury poisoning trying to find the cure for death. Important in that he brought about some of the major unification efforts in China, including the start of the Great Wall, and the end of the warring state’s period, but was also a paranoid panic that liked to purge people…Stalin but with a god complex if you will.

The film takes place in the final years of the war, as Qin is slowly and methodically dominating the surrounding kingdoms, who have collectively sent three assassins to take him out, Broken Sword, Flying Snow, and Long Sky, all of who are mega badass martial artists. The movie starts when a random sheriff, called Nameless, comes to the Emperor claiming to have killed all three of the assassins. He is summoned to the palace to tell the story of his success to the Emperor, and is allowed to come within Ten Feet of the Emperor (who apparently doesn’t allow any other than his bodyguard within 100 feet of him.) Nameless tells, in flash back form, how he took out each assassin one by one, by pitting them against each other, full with a series of elaborate fight scenes. The plot thickens when the Emperor, realizes that the Nameless is telling a bunch of lies, and only killed the assassins in order to get close to him so he can kill him. A second series of flashbacks reveal, Rashimon, which reveal that the other assassins in fact allowed themselves to be killed so that Nameless might get up to the Emperor, who is acting very smug for a guy next to a dangerous assassin. Then there is the massive story twist in which Nameless reveals that yes, he is an assassin, but only two of the assassins went against him, the eldest, Broken Sword, in fact attempted to stop him, saying that the Emperor in fact is better for the nation, because he united China under one rule. The emperor then revels that in fact he is working for the good of the Chinese people as a whole, and is allowing himself to be shown as a man who sacrifices his time and potential friendships for the good of the nation. The final set of flashbacks are then shown, revealing the assassins’ bickering among themselves, with Broken Sword finally being murdered, so the assassins can move through with there plan, but only after writing the word’s “Our Land” very dramatically in the dirt martial arts style, and empathizing the importance of a strong unified China. Then the Emperor pulls that old “if you want to kill me do so now” trick and the hero, realizing the importance of China being under control of a dictator with a god complex, and doesn’t kill him but attempts to leave the palace. The palace archers surround him and there is an admittedly cool scene of hoards of court servants chanting to the Emperor about how he must be killed for the good of the nation, and to make an example to the people, and the King regretfully orders Nameless’ execution (Nameless’ is a really awkward phrase), and China goes on to be come united under Qin and they all live happily ever after with a book burning psychopath at there head, I mean the just and self sacrificing ruler….yeah.

As you might have noticed this film suffers from more than at little bit of moral dissidence, but is in no way a reference or support of communist china…nope, no similarity what so ever to a film that is justifying a cruel and ruthless dictatorship’s actions for the good of the people in ancient china, while glossing over the massive real life corruption that plagued said dictatorships administration. The fact that the People’s Republic of china agreed to fund his films for the rest of his life (IE, how “Curse of the Golden Flower” could ever hope to be made) is just a coincidence…yeah. Basically, the whole film is communist propaganda, with lots of fight scenes and a heavy handed typical Communist message hammered home in the end. Now lets talk facts, yes Emperor Qin unified China, started construction on the Great Wall, and kept the nation stable, but he was also a paranoid psychopath who infamously destroyed most learning in the nation and killing over a million people. I mean, this guy is just Joseph Stalin, yeah he kept things unified but he essentially ruined the Soviet Union and was a total dictatorial psychopath. Dictatorship doesn’t work for a very good reason, nobody is ever able to know best on everything, not even Napoleon. Now as far as obvious communist propaganda goes, it isn’t that bad, I’ve seen a LOT worst, and while it is doesn’t have the quality of say, “Battleship Potemkin”, it is not nearly as heavy handed as say, “Alexander Nevsky”, through I prefer Ivan the Terrible when it comes to my communist propaganda.

Now to judging it as far as a movie, it is impressive, but nothing spectacular. The characters are flat, through never to the point of being revolting, it is certainly a hindrance. The costumes and weapons are impressive, but nothing stunning (through “Curse of the Golden Flower” will shock you), but lets focus it its role as a film. As a Wuxia film it is at first impressive, the spear sword battle in the beginning is really impressive, but as the movie drags on, they are pressured to make each fight top the other one, until it gets absurd. Crazy fight in a tea house with all types of water and time effects, fair enough. A crazy fight in the forests with lots of leaves and what not, ok fine. But two guys cutting down hoards of arrows, at that point I’m just unimpressed. And as the film goes on, they see fit to throw the fight scenes in more and more, until almost every conversation ends with one of them drawing a weapon and attacking the other.

As for the fights themselves, here is where we get to one of the essential problems with Wuxia films, they never do very well in building suspense. The first fight is elaborate, but as time goes by, the ever increasingly absurd fights become formulaic, and honestly, get boring. With all of these fights, which are essentially elaborate dances, the sense of anything really shocking happening in these fights is essentially zero, and so it gets to the point of just watching people jump around for 5 mins before one of them finally dies. This isn’t even impressive like a real dance would be because you know they are using special effects. And at some points it gets profoundly stupid. Why the hell would the Qin army send a hundred thousand men to take down a single library, or use up that many arrows. Arrows are expensive, and those men could most likely be needed elsewhere. And contrary to what the films says, always using the maximum force possible doesn’t work, because you need to preserve resources. And if two guys can destroy an entire arrow storm, what the hell is the point of hiring so many men? Hell, if two warriors can defeat three thousand troops, why bother assassinating the King? Just destroy his army, with three badass assassins willing to lose their lives, they could destroy a whole army, which should do enough on its own. In the end, this film is little more than a series of elaborate fights broken up with communist propaganda.

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