Hero

Time Richard Corliss

Hero is the masterpiece. 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 Michael Wilmington

Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Breathtaking masterpiece.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A walloping entertainment, brimming with the magic-realist action that made Ang Lee's somewhat similar "Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a hit.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Led by director Zhang Yimou and dazzling cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the unseen Hero production team has made what just might be the most artistically sophisticated, most formally beautiful martial arts film the genre has seen.

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

The result is both thrilling and thoughtful.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Hero is a movie that lives up to all the nobility of its title, a gift to movie audiences who cherish the opportunity to be transported to a heretofore unimagined world and absorbed totally into what happens there.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

One of the most ravishing spectacles the movies have given us.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Hero is one of the most beautiful and involving films of the year.

Empire Adam Smith

The comparisons are inevitable, so let's get them out of the way. Hero is a better film than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Perhaps the most beautiful film to hit Portland movie screens this year.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Yimou plays his images like a visual symphony, and turns a potential costume pageant into an exhilarating national myth.

LA Weekly Tim Appelo

Hero is an epic, evocative of another epoch and of landscapes beyond time. It's overwhelming. And yet I miss the animating anger of Zhang's early masterworks, in which penniless young lovers were oppressed by impotent old men.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

This is a leap into grandeur.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

You can feel the movie's sensibility and its powerful emotions in every aching image, which leaves you so caught up in these ancient times, you're loath to return to present-day normalcy.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A terrific piece of work.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A visual poem of extraordinary beauty.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

If you found "Crouching Tiger" a stunning bore, you probably won't fall under Hero's spell. But the rest of us, well, we'll be more than happy to savor every moment of its strange, ravishing beauty.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Its stars - especially the photogenic Leung and Cheung, fresh from Wong Kar Wai's jazzy romance In the Mood for Love - are wonderfully charismatic. And wonderfully athletic.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

I wish 'Hero's emotional heat rose more intensely -- more recklessly. There's something grand but distant and almost fetishistic about the operatic solemnity with which Zhang approaches the Rashomonic story of assassins attempting to kill a king.

Film Threat G. Allen Johnson

Hero is not a CTHD clone; it’s a wonderful movie in its own right, staking its own territory as a dreamlike meditation on motivation and love.

Variety Derek Elley

A dazzlingly lensed, highly stylized meditation on heroism.

Slate David Edelstein

If his (Zhang's) fight scenes don't fully intoxicate, though, his color and compositional rigor compensate for much. See Hero on the biggest screen you can find, and sit close enough for all that spiraling silk to tickle your nostril hairs.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

As gorgeous and contemplative as it is, Hero is a genre picture and needs to deliver the action goods. To that end, there are plenty of clever, lovingly choreographed sequences.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

It's full of passionate performances (except for the wooden Li), sizzling swordplay, bold and dazzling hues, and breathtaking landscapes.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

If there's a drawback, it's that the plot is trite. Hero is an exemplary example of visual poetry. The narrative is clearly of secondary concern.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

In the end, the spectacular martial-arts epic seems to signify nothing much more than its own beauty, as brilliant and ephemeral as a fireworks display.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

These people may be really, really dangerous, but they're also really, really polite.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Not as profound as it is pretty, Hero nevertheless gives us something to ponder beyond Zhang's feat in mounting such a magnificent production.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film never musters the intimate feel the gifted director brought to such early films as "Raise the Red Dragon" and "Ju Dou." You cheer his accomplishment in Hero without ever feeling close to it.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

So deliriously chockablock with high-flying, color-coordinated fight scenes that non-aficionados may find it all a bit bewildering--a gorgeous abstraction. It sure is gorgeous, though, and it has a dream cast

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Rich in motion -- the very clothes of the characters seem under a choreographer's direction -- as well as imagery.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Though the specifics of the story may be unfamiliar to Western viewers, its broad outlines and underlying themes are universal, and Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography transcends language.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Zhang Yimou's impeccably crafted, all-star martial arts extravaganza, is the essence of shallow gravitas.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Brilliant in flashes, thinned out as a whole, the film seems ideal for the DVD revolution, where the greatest hits can be compiled at the touch of a remote.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Hero keeps its characters stiffly archetypal, like chess pieces sent whizzing through outrageous maneuvers. Unfortunately, this apparent choice of spectacle over intimacy put me at a slight remove.

USA Today Mike Clark

A movie just good enough to keep nurturing rooting interest as you watch it.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Hero is easy on the eyes, but it's too segmented to gather much momentum and too art-directed to convey much urgency.