Movies - Hero

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Hero () is a Chinese martial arts and drama film, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li.

Hero is a film of the wuxia genre, directed by Zhang Yimou, whose Raise the Red Lantern
was nominated for an Academy Award. It stars Jet Li as the nameless protagonist, loosely based on the legendary Jing Ke. A group of assassins, Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), and Long Sky (Donnie Yen), have sworn to kill the King of Qin (Chen Daoming), and Nameless (Li) comes to the royal capital to claim the reward offered for their defeat. His conversation with the King of Qin, and the flashbacks depicted therein, form the bulk of the movie. Zhang Ziyi plays a minor role as Moon, Broken Sword's apprentice.

Hero was first released in China on October 24 2002; it was both the most expensive and the highest-grossing motion picture in Chinese cinema history. Miramax owned the American-market distribution rights, but delayed the release of the film a total of six times, to the great frustration of fans. Import DVDs of the film were sold online and Miramax that the sites cease selling the DVD, even as it kept delaying the film's release.

It was finally released to theatres in August 27, 2004 after intervention by Disney executives and Quentin Tarantino. Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax, originally planned on removing twenty minutes of the film that he believed would be confusing for Western audiences. However, he told Tarantino he would release the movie uncut if he agreed to be the film's presenter; for this reason, his name was attached to the credits as the film's "presenter." Tarantino's instincts were accurate; Hero topped the American box office for two weeks and eventually set a record as the highest-grossing opening-weekend foreign language film in the United States.

The United States version of the DVD, with Mandarin, English, and French soundtracks, was released on November 30 2004. Miramax, often criticized on DVD review sites for its sub-par DVD releases, struck again. The video quality of the Miramax DVD was considered inferior to the many imports available.

Plot

The film is set during the Warring States Period, shortly before the unification of China (circa 225 BC). It tells the story of assassination attempts on the king of Qin by legendary warriors who seek revenge for his subjugation of their nation. The king justifies his actions as necessary for the unification of China, pointing to the convoluted Chinese written language as illustration. In the text at the end of the film, the king is identified as Ying Zheng, who in 221 BC did indeed unite China under his command and become its first emperor and dynasty, Qin Shi Huang (lived 259-210 BC; reigned 246–210 BC); among many accomplishments, he unified smaller structures into the Great Wall of China, standardized a system of weights and measures, and invented a singular writing system that is still used today.

The film was Zhang's first attempt at this genre, and it uses a highly unusual structure. Conflicting versions of the events are recounted by different characters, in a structure reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon
(1950). Each section uses a different color scheme depending on the narrator's point of view, similar to how different color schemes are adopted in different rooms in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; Zhang's films often feature rigorous color schemes.

An interesting point is that, as the film progresses and more versions of the same story are presented, the characters of the narration improve with each new telling. They grow more intelligent, insightful, and thoughtful as the plot progresses. At the start of the film, during the first story told by the Nameless Hero, Broken Sword is portrayed as a mere brawler and Flying Snow seems ruled by her thoughts of the past and her hatred/love of Broken Sword; at the conclusion of the film, in the Nameless Hero's final story and the scenes after his death, Broken Sword is presented as a deeply contemplative and forward-thinking warrior and Flying Snow is a woman who feels the weight of their entire civilization resting upon her shoulders in addition to her own feelings. They are forced to grapple with complex issues that force them to think rather than fight, and they must weigh their own lives against their entire nation.

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Movies - Hero

Plot

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