Sunday, July 25, 2010

Hero Review

Like many of director Zhang Yimou’s films, Hero gives the viewer an initial impression of what the film is about, but upon further consideration has deeper meanings than expected. Starring Chinese martial arts action star Jet Li, one would believe that Hero is simply another action movie capitalizing on the popularity of Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, but the fighting becomes almost an afterthought to the main story and only serves to accent the underlying story. All of the major fight scenes throughout the movie are eventually deconstructed and shown to be not real fights, either having been fought in the mind or the winner already being predetermined. In showing that the fight scenes were essentially not real, Zhang leads us towards the idea that true battles are not fought with the sword, but with ideas.

When Nameless first approaches the King of Qin, he is allowed in because he is a great warrior who defeated the three assassins, Sky, Flying Snow, and Broken Sword. Nameless’ story is quickly seen through by the king, though, and they engage in a battle of the mind in order to determine who has the upper hand. The film shows us that it is the one with the greater psychological edge and ideas who will triumph. This is especially clear in the ending of the film, where Nameless abandons his plot to assassinate the king because of the idea of the greater nation.

Originally all four assassins were committed to killing the King of Qin, but after talking with Broken Sword, Nameless realized the greater ideal behind the king’s conquest of China. The concept of a greater unified nation and peace throughout the land resonated with Nameless to the extent that he gave up on his personal quest for vengeance. This can be seen as mirroring the idea behind the communist regime in China, sacrificing one’s own personal desires for the greater cause. In fact, Pauline Chen’s review of Hero draws notice to the fact that there have been criticisms of Zhang for tacitly supporting a tyrannical ruler through the film. It is not for us to say if Zhang was implicitly supporting the communist party through the abandonment of the assassination plot by Nameless, but the idea of giving oneself up for the betterment of the whole is the ideological basis for communism and Nameless is portrayed as being a “hero” for making that choice.

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