Hero (2002 film)

Hero
Directed by	Zhang Yimou
Written by	Feng Li Bin Wang Zhang Yimou
Produced by	Zhang Yimou
Starring	Jet Li Tony Leung Maggie Cheung Chen Daoming Zhang Ziyi Donnie Yen
Cinematography	Christopher Doyle
Edited by	Angie Lam
Music by	Tan Dun
Distributed by	Beijing New Picture Film Co. China EDKO Film Hong Kong
Release dates	October 24, 2002 (2002-10-24) (mainland China) December 21, 2002 (2002-12-21) (Hong Kong)
Running time	Theatrical 99 minutes Extended Version 107 Minutes
Country	China
Language	Mandarin
Budget	$31 million
Box office	$177,394,432

Hero is a 2002 Wuxia film directed by Zhang Yimou. Starring Jet Li as the nameless protagonist, the film is based on the story of Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin in 227 BC.

Hero was first released in China on October 24, 2002. At that time, it was the second most expensive project after Tsui Hark's The Legend of Zu, and the highest-grossing motion picture in Chinese film history. Miramax Films owned the American market distribution rights, but delayed the release of the film for nearly two years. It was finally presented by Quentin Tarantino to American theaters on August 27, 2004.

Plot

In ancient China during the Warring States period, a nameless prefect of a small jurisdiction arrives at the Qin state's capital city to meet the King of Qin. The king has just survived an attempt on his life by three feared assassins (Long Sky, Flying Snow and Broken Sword), and has taken precautions to protect himself, including forbidding visitors to approach closer than 100 paces to his throne. Nameless claims that he had slain the three assassins and he displays their weapons before the king, who is impressed and allows Nameless to sit progressively closer to him and tell him his story.

Nameless recalls approaching Long Sky at a Weiqi parlor, where he dueled and slew the assassin in front of witnesses. Later, he travelled to a calligraphy school in the Zhao state, where he met Flying Snow and Broken Sword. Nameless asks Sword for a scroll with the Chinese character for "Sword" written on it. Snow and Sword are lovers and Sword is heartbroken when he hears from Nameless that Snow has a secret affair with Sky. In retaliation, Sword has sex with his servant, Moon, right in front of Snow. Snow killed Sword in a fit of silent rage, prompting Moon to fight her to avenge her master. Moon died in the fight after accidentally impaling herself on Snow's blade. The following day, the emotionally-distracted Snow was killed by Nameless in a duel.

As the tale concludes, the king expresses disbelief at Nameless' story, based on his knowledge of Sword and Snow's morally-uprightness. The king accuses Nameless of staging the duels with the assassins, who had surrendered their lives to him to allow him to gain the king's trust and take his life. The king theorizes that Snow had injured Sword to prevent him from stopping her from dying in a public duel with Nameless. Moon approached Nameless later with Sword's weapon, declaring that Sword will die together with his lover. Concluding his tale, the king suspects that the assassins had invested their lives in an unstoppable assassination attempt, that would require the assassin to be ten paces away from him.

Nameless admits that he is a native of the Zhao state and his family were killed by Qin soldiers, and proceeds to describe his unstoppable swordplay technique, which allows him to strike accurately within a distance of ten steps. He also confesses that he had indeed used this technique to defeat Sky in a non-lethal manner and had proposed it to Snow and Sword. Snow agreed to fake her death at Nameless' hands and had wounded Sword to prevent him from interfering. After Snow's apparent death, Sword approaches Nameless and tells him the story of how he met Snow. Sword explains that the only way to achieving peace within China, is to allow all the states to be unified under a common dynasty. In Sword's opinion, the king of Qin is the only man capable of accomplishing this task, and assassinating him will only cause China to disintegrate into anarchy and civil war.

The king is deeply moved by the tale and Sword's understanding of his dream to unify China. He throws his sword to Nameless and turns his back on him. The king examines Sword's scroll, which explains the ideal warrior, who, paradoxically, should have no desire to kill. When Nameless realizes the wisdom of these words, he abandons his mission and leaves. Meanwhile, Snow concludes that Sword had convinced Nameless to forgo the assassination. She denounces Sword as a traitor and attacks him in anger. Sword allows her to kill him to make her understand his love for her and hopes for universal peace. Snow is overcome by guilt and commits suicide with the same sword later. Back at the Qin palace, Nameless awaits death in the courtyard and the king reluctantly orders Nameless to be killed by a shower of arrows. As the film ends, Nameless receives a funeral with honours and the closing text declares the King of Qin eventually unified China under the Qin Dynasty, becoming Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China.

Cast

• Jet Li as Nameless (無名): An unknown prefect of a small province, Nameless is orphaned at an early age by the Qin invading forces. Forged into a master swordsman over years of training, Nameless possesses the singular technique "Death at Ten Paces" allowing him to strike precisely within that distance. The degree of control is such that it allows him to perform both an unstoppable critical attack and to inflict apparently critical but nonlethal injuries. He is the primary conspirator behind the elaborate plan to assassinate the king, but ultimately decides that China's unification and peace are more important than vengeance. Hero also saw Jet Li's first appearance in a film produced by mainland China, since he made his debut in Shaolin Temple (1982)

• Tony Leung as Broken Sword (殘劍): Broken Sword and Flying Snow are the only assassins to ever infiltrate the king's palace, killing hundreds of his personal guard and very nearly the king himself before halting his attack at the last moment. Sword views the unification of China and the possibility of peace over his personal objectives, views that put him at odds with his lover, Flying Snow. Of all the assassins, he is the only one who Nameless considers to be his equal in terms of swordsmanship.

• Maggie Cheung as Flying Snow (飛雪): A skilled assassin, Flying Snow is Broken Sword's lover and his near equal as a swordsman. The daughter of a prominent Zhao general who fell in battle against the king, Snow swears revenge against the king, drafting Broken Sword to her cause. Unlike Broken Sword, she harbors the deepest grudge against the king.

• Chen Daoming as the King of Qin (秦王): An ambitious leader who desires to become the first Emperor of China. Following an assassination attempt, he withdraws into his reinforced palace, which he vacates of all but his most trusted advisors, and always wears his battle armor. (The King of Qin uses an ancient way of saying "I", 寡人 (Chinese: guǎ rén), which literally means "lonely person", but consists of the two Chinese characters "寡" which means less, or lacking, and "人" which means man, or person, in ancient Chinese, it has the meaning of "a man who lacks morals" (寡德之人), since royalty is mostly gained by shedding blood. This way of referring to himself in the third person has a parallel in the Western notion of the "Royal 'We'" or Pluralis majestatis.)

• Donnie Yen as Long Sky (長空): a legendary outlaw and accomplished spearman, Sky is the first to be "defeated" by Nameless, who takes Sky's broken spear as proof of his defeat to the king.

• Zhang Ziyi as Moon (如月): Broken Sword's loyal apprentice

Reception and interpretation

Box office

When Hero opened in Hong Kong in December 2002, it grossed a massive HK $15,471,348 in its first week. Its final gross of HK $26 million made it one of the top films in Hong Kong that year. On August 27, 2004, after a long delay, Hero opened in 2,031 North American screens uncut and subtitled. It debuted at #1, grossing US $18,004,319 ($8,864 per screen) in its opening weekend. The total was the second highest opening weekend ever for a foreign language film; only The Passion of the Christ has opened to a better reception. Its US $53,710,019 North American box office gross makes it the fourth highest-grossing foreign language film and 15th highest-grossing martial arts film in North American box office history. The total worldwide box office gross was US $177,394,432.

Critical response

The film received extremely favorable reviews scoring 95% at Rotten Tomatoes and 84 at Metacritic. Roger Ebert called it "beautiful and beguiling, a martial arts extravaganza defining the styles and lives of its fighters within Chinese tradition." Richard Corliss of Time described it as "the masterpiece", adding that "it employs unparalleled visual splendor to show why men must make war to secure the peace and how warriors may find their true destiny as lovers." Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington called it "swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling" and "an action movie for the ages." Charles Taylor of Salon.com took an especially positive stance deeming it "one of the most ravishing spectacles the movies have given us". Nevertheless there were several film critics who felt the film had advocated autocracy and reacted with discomfort. The Village Voice's reviewer deemed it to have a "cartoon ideology" and justification for ruthless leadership comparable to Triumph of the Will.

Political meaning and criticism

This film has faced criticism, as well as praise from abroad as a perceived pro-totalitarian and pro-Chinese reunification subtext. Critics also cited as evidence the approval that had been given to the film by the government of the People's Republic of China. These critics argued that the ulterior meaning of the film was triumph of security and stability over liberty and human rights, analogous to the "Asian values" concept that gained brief popularity in the 1990s.

In some respects, the film has not been well received by the Chinese. Although it was then the biggest Chinese film in terms of investment (since surpassed by Red Cliff in 2009), and received excellent box office returns, it drew heavy criticism from within the Chinese community due to its simplistic storyline and themes. Notably, director Zhang Yimou's later big budget film House of Flying Daggers was also criticized in China for the same reason.

The film's director, Zhang Yimou, purportedly withdrew from the 1999 Cannes Film Festival to protest similar criticism, though some believed that Zhang had other reasons. Defenders of Zhang and his film argued that the Chinese government's approval of Hero was no different from the U.S. military providing support to films such as Top Gun and Black Hawk Down, in which certain filmmakers portrayed the U.S. armed forces in a positive light. Others have rejected entirely the notion that Zhang had any political motives in his making of the film. Zhang Yimou himself had maintained that he had absolutely no political points to make.

Translation of "Tianxia"

There has been some criticism of the film for its American-release translation of one of the central ideas in the film: 天下 (Tiānxià). It literally means "all (everything and everyone) under heaven", and is a phrase to mean "the World". In fact, for its release in Belgium, some two years before the U.S. release, the subtitled translation was indeed "all under heaven". However, the version shown in American cinemas was localized as the two-word phrase "Our land" instead, which seems to denote just the nation of China rather than the whole world. Whether Zhang Yimou intended the film to also have meaning with regard to the world and world unity was at that time difficult to say. Zhang Yimou was asked about the change at a screening in Massachusetts and said it was a problem of translation: "If you ask me if 'Our land' is a good translation, I can't tell you. All translations are handicapped. Every word has different meanings in different cultures," he said. However, in Cause: The Birth of Hero – a documentary on the making of Hero – Zhang mentions that he hopes the film will have some contemporary relevance, and that, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (which took place just before the movie was filmed) the themes of universal brotherhood and "peace under heaven" may indeed be interpreted more globally, and taken to refer to peace in "the world." The phrase was later changed in television-release versions of the film.

Miramax release

Miramax, the film studio, owned the American-market distribution rights, but delayed the release of the film, a record total of six times. Import DVDs of the film were sold online and Miramax demanded that the sites cease selling the DVD. The movie was finally released in American theaters on August 27, 2004 after intervention by Disney executives and Quentin Tarantino, who helped secure an uncut English-subtitled release. He also offered to lend his name to promotional material for the film in order to attract box office attention to it; his name was attached to the credits as "Quentin Tarantino Presents". In addition, a sword held by Jet Li's character in the original promotional poster was replaced by weapon resembling a katana, a Japanese weapon, in the North American promotional poster, which was both anachronistic and culturally misplaced. The United States version of the DVD, with Mandarin, English, and French soundtracks, was released on November 30, 2004.

Awards and recognition

• Hero was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 2003 Academy Awards but lost to Nowhere in Africa (Germany).
• Zhang Yimou won the Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003 for his work in Hero.
• The National Society of Film Critics awarded Zhang Yimou their Best Director award.
• The New York Film Critics Circle recognized cinematographer Christopher Doyle with its award for Best Cinematography.
• The Chicago Film Critics Association awarded Hero Best Cinematography, alongside Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.
• The Online Film Critics Society awarded Hero Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Language Film.
• Hero received seven Hong Kong Film Awards in 2003, including Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound. The movie was also nominated for seven other awards, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Song, and Best Director.
• Hero won joint Best Film at the Hundred Flowers Awards in 2003.

DVD release

An extended edition with eight minutes of additional footage was released in China. However, it was rumored that the original film was slated to be some 20 minutes longer, with critical character building of the five main characters (Nameless, Broken Sword, Flying Snow, Long Sky and the future Emperor of Qin). It features minor differences in story, music, and fight sequences from those of the theatrical version. One particular difference in the extended version of 'Hero' was Moon attempting to take her life before Nameless stops her after Broken Sword left with his sword and words. Hero is one of very few titles to be released on EVD as well as DVD.

Music

• The film was scored by Tan Dun, a famous contemporary classical composer.
• The theme song Hero (英雄) by Zhang Yadong and Lin Xi is sung by Faye Wong. It is unavailable in the American version of both the film DVD and soundtrack album.
• Wind & Sand (風沙) is a theme song inspired by the film and sung by actor Tony Leung. It is only available in his album of that name.
• The musical instrument seen and played during the fight in the Weiqi courtyard scene is a guqin, the Chinese seven-stringed zither. The music was performed by Liu Li on a guqin.

Other media

• The comic book version of the story by Ma Wing-shing is faithful to the film's story for the most part, until the ending. In this version, all of the heroes survive.
• Drum n' bass group Evol Intent have a song entitled "Broken Sword" which appears on the Dieselboy compilation album The Human Resource on both discs. The song samples the film's soundtrack.
• R&B artist Bobby Valentino samples from the movie on the single titled "Tell Me".
• Hero (Music from the Original Soundtrack) Itzhak Perlman, Kodo & Tan Dun.[1]

External links

• Hero at IMDb
• Hero at AllMovie
• Hero at Box Office Mojo
• Hero at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hero at Metacritic
• Hero at LoveHKFilm.com
• Is HERO a Paean to Authoritarianism?
• Cracking the Color Code of 'Hero'
• A comparison of DVD releases
• Zhang Ziyi CSC: Hero
• Hero from Helloziyi.us
• Hero's film review