I watched Hero last week at the cinema and compared to all the hype that China (its all over TV and cinema seats are always full house requiring purchase in advance) has given the film with big names such as Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Zi Yi … I found it to be more of the same.
Cinematography mimicked Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon(CTHD) from the camera angles in fights to even the flying around. Even the combat sounds and the drumming (that cool drumming from CTHD) is also in Hero.
Though it had interesting little action pieces the worst thing was the Story I mean even the name hero should be changed to Killing sword in Ten Steps not undertaken.
its not released here in the uk yet and i really hope it is soon. i also hope its worthwhile as it has had a lot of hype. I really wanna see something breathtaking from jet li, as i know he can do it and am fed up of the ‘american’ action - like tuxedo and the one… mediocre action at best
walked into my local vcd rental place today and the owner was kind enough to point out hero. i may not have the scruples/willpower of others so i rented it (obvious pirate job).
it started with that short trailer/advert spot that was mentioned so i was afraid it was just a “making of” thing that i saw mentioned on the li lian jie thread
but it was all there (just the 90 or so minute version).
video quality was good for a pirate vcd.
incidentally i had to pay 3 yuan rather than the usual 1 yuan to rent it and had to put 30 yuan on deposit rather than the usual 10 yuan…and they wanted it returned within two hours
all in all i really liked it. i’m not sure what more they’re gonna put in the extra 30 minutes as it seemed pretty complete to me.
previously my favorite kung fu movies have been crouching tiger, taiji zhang san feng (tai chi master), and wu shi (the korean movie that i still havent seen in english), drunken master 2, and that shaolin movie with gordon liu where he has to go through all the training (was it 36 Chambers?).
so take this for what its worth but i thought it was as good or better than all of those. don’t want to give any spoilers, so i won’t comment on the fight scenes or the story, but i thought the story was well done.
the subtitles appeared to be incorporated into the film and varied very little from the chinese that i could understand, so all copies will probably have english in them.
Just got the DVD & the VCD, one sent from Hong Kong the other I picked up in Chinatown. Also just got Bullet Proof Monk (Chow Yuen Fat’s latest), ironically they were reshooting the ending here in Vancouver.
Honestly I didn’t enjoy Hero as much as CTHD. Although some of the action in Hero is executed a little better, I didn’t feel filming of the action in Hero was a good as CTHD. As CHTD had a chemistry between the cast that helped drive the story that I didn’t find in Hero.
Don’t get me wrong I would still recommend Hero, it is a good film, well done (although even more over the top then CTHD) and definitely worth a watch if you are into the genre.
cool, i like the fantasy/kung fu genre… “a man called hero” is one of my all time favourites, as well as the original Zu: warriors of magic mountain and samo’s encounters of the spooky kind
The “official” bbotleg has been recalled and the company is being sued. The official bootleg vcd is now off the shelves. But i still got my copy.
I may have misunderstood your meaning of “official”. I thought the studio itself must have released a degraded copy.
How can ebay have something on dvd that is not yet released in North America in regular movie theaters?. And i take it that if they had it it would be the miramax verison.
No; it’s easy to convert a VCD to DVD. Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend the bootleg; the English subs are covered up by the seat in front of the camera.
So they released a vcd, NOT DVD, (no matter how easy it is to do a DVD).
What I meant is that anyone who has the VCD can turn it into a DVD on their home PC. And re-sell it as a DVD on eBay, if they are so unscrupulous.
The VCD they did release was a superior copy of filmed-in theater in Hong Kong with english subtitles. Everything, including the subtitles were quite clear. I guess when you are say “covered up by the seat in front of the camera” , you are just imagining what it might be instead of what is. I don’t think it is on e-bay, you were probably thinking of what might be, not what is. Is that correct?
No, I didn’t imagine it, I saw it. So there must be more than one version floating around. I don’t know which version they are selling online.
We have a bootleg Taiwan VCD here where you can see the heads of people in the audience. I hear that the official VCDs and DVDs are to be released this month (FEB) so they should be surfacing pretty soon at your favorite chinatown shop or website.
U.S theatrical release was hinging on if it got nominated for an Oscar for international. I heard that it didn’t. Anyone know for sure? I also heard that it was nominated for a Golden Globe but didn’t win. Again, these are just rumors and I haven’t gone to the trouble of validating them. Hopefully someone here can do that for us.
Right after I posted that, I picked up my email and there were several spam ads from DVD/VCD websites pushing pre-orders. According to them, the release is the 19th (today.) NOw I don’t have to watch that Taiwan bootleg.
Question for those of you who’ve seen it - is it appropriate for children? What rating would you give it?
Man, I don’t understand the rating system. This one has no real bloody scenes or cruel violence and the sex scene was prety tame.
So PG?
Does your kid watch this type of movie? I don’t let mine. It’s too dark. Then again, the powerpuff girls movie was much more violent and my kid cried during elmo’s movie so what do I know.
I think it’s a PG type movie. Not an R or even a PG-13.
I’ll have to chek Chinatown this weekend if the Hero DVD is out in SF.
Nowadays kids that are our age can’t even watch TV. It’d ridiculous. As for movies, I’d love to have to luxury to screen everything, but I barely have the luxury to see movies anymore. My kid watched Spiderman and that was ok. I’m always afraid of what will frighten her, but she thought the green goblin was funny, like aliens on star trek, and a lot of her classmates have seen spiderman so she recognises him right alongside bugs bunny, et. al. As for KF movies, if they’re just fight flicks, like say Undaunted Wudang, I don’t let her watch them yet. There’s already issues about pushing at preschool soo why exacerbate it. But she enjoys Jackie, especially the slapstick, and she loves his cartoon but we seldom watch it anymore.
I thoroughly enjoyed Hero. What a spectacle. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen instead of my tiny TV.
It’s way overblown for Zhang Yimou, not at all what I was expecting given his earlier work. At first, the color usage reminded me more of Tsui Hark and the slo-mos reminded me of John Woo. The legion sequences echoed Kurosawa, but then, he broke the mold when it came to choreography on the massive army scale, so any ancient battle pales by comparison. What surprised me most was the use of CGI. The story is told in flashbacks, and there is another nod to Kurosawa akin to Ras****n.
Moreso, I loved the themes of swordsmanship as art and art as a vehicle for enlightenment. That really spoke to my soul. That “big picture” theme is what I was expecting from Zhang and as usual, he delivered with that kind of nagging imagery that comes back to you later. The overall message, the moral if you will, was beautiful and brilliant.
The fights were mediocre from a martial arts standpoint. Donnie vs. Jet is cool. I liked Maggie vs. Zhang for it’s sureal quality (plus who can deny swordswoman cat fights?) It’s high fantasy with lots of flying wire work, but entertainly executed. Traditionalists will complain about the wire work, but they can save their money for the Shaw Brothers rerelease.
As for the inevitable CTHD comparison, it’s not another CTHD. It won’t get that kind of recognition. It’s not geared to westerners in the same popular vein. Plus CTHD cut a path that will be hard to follow up. That’s too bad since I think more highly of Zhang Yimou then Ang Lee. But it will stand as one of the more magnificient martial arts movies in our oh-so-B-grade genre. I think many will look down on Hero because of this comparison, which is the real shame.
And my kid enjoyed it. She thought Jet was a really funny name and told me she could jump and fly like that someday. It was fairly bloodless and the one sex scene was more implied. My wife frowned at the stabbing, but wives do that sometimes, and for my daugther, they were off camera enough so it wasn’t much different than Peter Pan vs. Capt. Hook.
