So, there's comedy, horror, drama and now action in which foreigners have us beat. Don't like what I said just there? Bite me. It's true. They're better than us at filmmaking these days. Where Hollywood has become a creative vapid cesspool, the foreign lands have become a haven for creativity and originality, and I prefer the latter. Ah. America. How unwilling we are to move forward and explore different horizons. "Hero" went through quite a grueling process of trying to get distributed in America. First, the studio heads wouldn't allow it because it was "too Asian" and would only distribute it if Quentin Tarantino was involved, and then some scenes were cut deemed as too much of its native land's themes (An Asian movie? No!) but was released with rave reviews.

This is one of them. "Hero" may look like another actioner, it may sound like just another actioner, but you'd be surprised, there are a lot of layers beneath the facade of a revenge flick. There are layers of romance, war, and relationships here with a sprawling and incredible feast for the eyes, and mind. The nameless hero is his name and he's just been summoned by the King of Qin to tell how he defeated three of the most powerful assassins and enabled the king to rule another day from their threat. Now the king is skeptical and begins trying to unfold what really happened.

Now I won’t give away the rest of the story, but I was hooked. With some unbelievable and breathtaking cinematography from Christopher Doyle, I was just stunned at some of the most amazing landscapes here from whirlwind leaves to changing backdrops during the fights, this is just magnificent (at risk of sounding like a one-line newspaper ad). I was in awe at some of the truly incredible fight sequences as well, including the fight between broken sword and the nameless. The slow-motion and swift choreography make for some exciting epic battles and director Yimou Zhang truly has something to be proud of here. There's nothing here that alienates the American audience, and I was surprised at how the studios would cut something in fear of such a thing.

I wish those suits would stop trying to choose for the audience. The story is very intricate and sophisticated and full of point of views reminiscent of "Rashomon". We experience some incredible tension and dialogue between Jet Li and Daoming Chen both the nameless and the King of Qin throughout the film is something to watch because the chemistry and tension between the two is excellent. Director Yimou Zhang gives a truly epic story about love and honor within nameless quest for re-claiming the land within the art of swordplay. Li is great in his performance here as the quiet nameless hero ala Eastwood.

While I was skeptical about the quality of this film, proclaiming this as a mere "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" sequel, this was surprising in its quality with some beautiful, simply beautiful landscapes and back drops and fight sequences. There is a good cast of actors here that play some top-notch heroes and villains including Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, and the utterly beautiful Ziyi Zhang who gives a great inspiring performance here. All the while, in the end, I was very pleased with the palette of phenomenal colors and scenery and magical fight sequences and brilliant choreography that was almost too fast to notice, there are some excellent memorable scenes here including the shower of arrows on the calligraphy school, and the fight between Flying Snow and Moon. "Hero" is a real accomplishment of fantasy and adventure and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The fight scenes are exhausting, just utterly exhausting after a while. I just couldn't take it anymore. Rather than long periods of story telling and dialogue and characters focus and then a great fight sequence, there are a lot of fight sequences, so much so you become numb towards it. I lost patience pretty quickly within the hour marker. How many times can you see a person storm a colossal army with a sword before it loses all ingenuity? How many slow-motion sequences can you sit through before it becomes tired? How many times can you see massive armies before it becomes boring? Only three. Only three. It's a shame. The story goes on way too long, and it seems an hour and a half is
a little bit of a stretch for this "epic" which isn't really an epic. I lost interest after the second half of the story and regardless of how I tried, I felt detached by climax which really didn't deliver to the anticipation given and built throughout the film.

While the fight scenes become exhausting and numbing after a while, "Hero" is truly one of the best action martial arts fantasy's in years with top notch acting and beautiful directing and cinematography.