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34
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60
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88
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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70
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66
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59
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54
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76
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79
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69
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64
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69
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You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Hero

Universal acclaim
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 177 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Drama | Foreign | Romance
Written by:
Feng Li
Bin Wang
Yimou Zhang
Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 27, 2004
DVD: November 30, 2004
Running Time: 96 minutes, Color
Origin: Hong Kong / China
Language(s): Mandarin (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for stylized martial arts violence and a scene of sensuality
Starring Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Daoming Chen, and Donnie Yen
The time: two thousand years ago. The place: the violent dawn of the Qin dynasty. The story: the soon-to-be First Emperor of China is on the brink of conquering a war-torn land. Three opponents are determined to assassinate him and one loyal subject stands in their way. (Miramax)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Curse of the Golden Flower Happy Times House of Flying Daggers Not One Less Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles The Road Home
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Charles Taylor
One of the most ravishing spectacles the movies have given us.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Hero is one of the most beautiful and involving films of the year.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
Perhaps the most beautiful film to hit Portland movie screens this year.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Yimou plays his images like a visual symphony, and turns a potential costume pageant into an exhilarating national myth.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Film Threat G. Allen Johnson
Hero is not a CTHD clone; its a wonderful movie in its own right, staking its own territory as a dreamlike meditation on motivation and love.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
These people may be really, really dangerous, but they're also really, really polite.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.
Read Full Review >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
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Zhang Yimou's impeccably crafted, all-star martial arts extravaganza, is the essence of shallow gravitas.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
A movie just good enough to keep nurturing rooting interest as you watch it.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 177 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Desmondo2000 gave it a10:
This is my favorite Jet Li movie.
Ryan C. gave it a10:
One of the most exquisitely filmed movies I've seen, and a great philosophy and message about warriors and their "ultimate ideal" is inside the movie, a multi-layered story that takes a thinking mind to realize everything.
Bin A. gave it an8:
A visual feast where the cumbersome narrative diminishes a compelling story with a rather basic exploration of ethics and morality
cyrus l. gave it a10:
Great movie. A bit long at times but ogod scenes.
Ryan gave it a10:
Amazingly beautiful "Wuxia" genre film. One of my favorite movies of all time! House of Flying Daggers is a tie!
Jake gave it a9:
On my of favourite matrial arts pictures. It combines a great story, which is told an cool way (After 20 Minutes the film seems done. I laught very hard in cinema) with very good fighting sequencenes.
yin yan gave it a10:
Amazing beautiful movie, with a well-constructed plot that fits together really well.
