ArtsEtc.

‘Hero’ brings nuance to action genre

Since advertising began for the U.S. release of Zhang Yimou’s film “Hero,” a name has been coupled with the project more prominently than Zhang’s or even that of the film’s star, Jet Li: Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino’s name does not appear anywhere in the actual print of the film, yet there it is on every movie poster and trailer: “Quentin Tarantino Presents …”

This is curious for a couple of reasons, but the most indelible of these is that “Hero” is aesthetically and textually so very far from the work of Tarantino. In fact, hopefully Mr. Tarantino, along with the majority of modern American filmmakers, can learn a lesson in artistic restraint from the film.

Zhang understands the absence of a symbol can be just as powerful as its presence. “Hero” creates a sense of foreboding using the flickering of hundreds of candles, as opposed to a loaded pistol or bloodied sword.

What Zhang accomplishes is a piece of brilliant filmmaking and something so very foreign to many modern American filmmakers — a bold war film about peace.

“Hero” is the story of a nameless assassin, played deftly by Jet Li, and his encounter during a time of war and unrest with the king of Qin (Chen Daoming) who is unsure of whether to greet this career assassin as a hero or as a possible threat. In the king’s attempt to eventually conquer the six other kingdoms across China, he has been presumably aided by Nameless’s murder of three assassins who posed the most threat to the emperor’s designs of conquest.

The film unfolds over three principle flashbacks, each shot primarily with a differently hued mise-en-scene. Nameless and the king relate possible details surrounding the murders of the three enemy assassins, and Zhang and his crew take the ambiguity presented in these recollections to create sumptuous and stylized dreamscapes where the laws of physics do not apply and where there is always a gentle breeze billowing lushly colored robes.

As with most martial-arts films, the narrative is based around a few pivotal encounters but unlike most other such films, the action sequences are not the most dramatic or even awe-inspiring parts of the picture. In “Hero,” the fights between Nameless and the three other assassins, Sky (Donnie Yen), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) are expertly constructed bits of filmmaking, but they are by no means the crux of the movie.

“Hero” also has an intelligence and empathy that is not present in the majority of martial-arts epics. It continues the tradition of the wuxia film, the Chinese equivalent of the American war film genre, which “Crouching Tiger” recently and successfully revisited. But one would have to go back to the works of Kurosawa to find an example of the sort of film with as much breadth and social awareness as “Hero.”

As the king of Qin relates to Nameless his ultimate plan to create one unified, unilingual and homogenized empire out of the seven warring kingdoms, one cannot help but sense a nod to the presence of modern cultural imperialism—something China has historically tried to hinder. And although the film was completed almost two years ago and initial conception began well before that, it is not too big of a stretch to say that “Hero” shows the signs of being a post-9/11 war film as it posits the necessary congruence between vast power and responsibility. This movie displays how wars have heroes on both sides as well as ubiquitous ambiguity.

Miramax sat on “Hero” for two years but released it at a perfect time between the explosive summer movie season and the sensitive dramas of the fall season. It is a compact action film with themes and imagery that resonate with the audience long after they have exited the theater. It demonstrates that the ultimate ideal of a warrior is to lay down the sword — an ideal that Hollywood filmmakers could learn from.

Grade: A