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Underrated Movie: Hero
Title: Hero
Year: 2002
Director: Zhang Yimou
Writers: Zhang Yimou, Feng Li, Bin Wang
Stars: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Donnie Yen
The Story: 2000 years ago, at the birth of imperial China. A local prefect takes it upon himself to eliminate the three assassins that threaten his new emperor. But when he is invited to the palace to explain how he did it, the emperor quickly becomes suspicious of his story…
One Reason Why It’s Great: In the ’80s and ’90s, a lot of action films, especially Asian action films, were marketed as being “balletic” or “poetic”. In most cases, this was an insult to the arts of ballet and poetry. It does a director like John Woo (Zhang’s contemporary from neighboring Hong Kong) no favors to ascribe high-minded aspirations to his movies. He shows exquisite craft, but he has very little to say. Zhang, on the other hand, takes this challenge seriously. This is one of the few movies that actually attempts to incorporate the formal beauty and intellectual rigor of poetry into the action genre. So who’s the hero? That question remains unanswered at the end. This is ultimately not a war of swords, but a war of dueling stories. History belongs not to those with military might, but to those who can best exploit the people’s fatal weakness for heroic narratives.
Two more reasons over at Cockeyed Caravan.
