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Sumptuous and breath-catching, Hero blends the elegance of fine visual art with the more familiar cinematic jollies of attractive people engaged in crunching punch-ups. But the lavish look isn't there to disguise a fluffy centre. There's a solid, universal story here: a tale of loyalty, love and sacrifice. What's more, the glossy surface is there to service the plot, not detract from it. The Rashomon-style, multi-perspective storytelling is ingeniously, intimately colour-coded, performances (particularly Maggie Cheung's) are rich and complex, and at its centre is Jet Li, immense as the inscrutable killer of killers. Granted an unusually intimate audience with the paranoid king, he communicates his character's buried motivations with subtle tics and glances. Naturally, he also lays righteous waste to all comers...
Here is a film where every frame feels individually designed, with saturated colour and symmetry reflecting the texture and natural wonder of the environment. It also hits the mark in terms of grand scale, contrasting between dizzying swarms of extras and tiny figures picked out amid vast, expansive landscapes.
The legacy of Crouching Tiger shines through, but this operatic action film is still incredibly beautiful, packed with kinetic flair and classical weight.
