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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Hero
Miramax Films
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FILM:
MPAA 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)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Drama
|
Foreign
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Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Feng Li
Bin Wang
Yimou Zhang
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Yimou Zhang
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 30, 2004
Video: November 30, 2004
Theatrical: August 27, 2004
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| RUNNING TIME: |
96 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
Hong Kong / China |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
Mandarin (with English subtitles) |
Original title "Ying xiong"; Nominated, Best Foreign Language Film, 75th Annual Academy Awards; Alfred Bauer Award, 2003 Berlin International Film Festival; Best Action Choreography, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costumes/Make-Up, Best Music, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects, 2003 Hong Kong Film Awards
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...
100
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.
100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Swooningly beautiful, furious and thrilling, Zhang Yimou's Hero is an action movie for the ages.
100
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Breathtaking masterpiece.
100
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.
100
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.
100
Chicago Reader
Hank Sartin
The result is both thrilling and thoughtful.
100
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.
100
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
One of the most ravishing spectacles the movies have given us.
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Hero is one of the most beautiful and involving films of the year.
100
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."
91
Portland Oregonian
Marc Mohan
Perhaps the most beautiful film to hit Portland movie screens this year.
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Yimou plays his images like a visual symphony, and turns a potential costume pageant into an exhilarating national myth.
90
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.
90
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
This is a leap into grandeur.
90
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.
89
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
A terrific piece of work.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A visual poem of extraordinary beauty.
88
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.
88
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.
83
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.
80
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.
80
Variety
Derek Elley
A dazzlingly lensed, highly stylized meditation on heroism.
80
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
These people may be really, really dangerous, but they're also really, really polite.
75
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.
75
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.
70
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.
70
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
70
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Rich in motion -- the very clothes of the characters seem under a choreographer's direction -- as well as imagery.
70
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.
70
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Zhang Yimou's impeccably crafted, all-star martial arts extravaganza, is the essence of shallow gravitas.
70
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.
70
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.
63
USA Today
Mike Clark
A movie just good enough to keep nurturing rooting interest as you watch it.
60
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.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 176 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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