I watched Hero on DVD last night, I was quite impressed.
The Cinematography was absolutely beautiful, every frame of this movie was lavished with an attention to detail you would expect in a great painting.
Most of the film is told in flashbacks, and anyone who loved Crouching Tiger (though this film is not as good IMO)should give this a look. The film is a little light on the dialogue, but this is very forgiveable. The fight sequences are incredible, but I would have loved to have been able to get to know the characters a little more.
All in all, well worth the time or money to see.
I welcome thoughts from anyone else who has seen this.
By the way, If you do get the DVD, be forewarned, the beginning and end crawl have no subtitles, luckily for me, my wife can read the characters.
beefjerky
05-09-04, 03:37 PM
I wasn't a fan of Hero's in-your-face, look-at-me visuals. Crouching Tiger had a very subtle beauty to it, while Hero was just trying too hard. Hero also had some of the worst fight editing ever. Two fighters would connect punches, and in the next shot, they're half a football field away, running at each other. There was no continuity to the fights.
caiman
05-09-04, 04:28 PM
Originally posted by rushmore223
By the way, If you do get the DVD, be forewarned, the beginning and end crawl have no subtitles, luckily for me, my wife can read the characters.
That depends which DVD you get. The R3 Hong Kong version has the opening/closing subtitles, as does the R2 Japan.
Patman
05-09-04, 07:49 PM
Since a DVDTalker was nice enough to tell us what the opening and closing words/subtitles in this thread (http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=359428), I opted to order the cheap version on Ebay ($10.75) today. Can't wait to watch the DVD.
karnblack
05-09-04, 07:58 PM
Great movie. I can't wait to see it in theaters.
Alien Redrum
05-09-04, 08:30 PM
Caught this last night.
I was very impressed with it and will probably watch it again this week.
Amel
05-09-04, 08:48 PM
I watched this again last night also. Beautiful film. Can't wait to see it in the theatre. I loved the story and the way it unfolded. Great fighting scenes.
Ky-Fi
05-09-04, 09:41 PM
I thought Crouching Tiger had a more engaging story and characters, but Hero was a bit more impressive visually, IMO. I thought the fights were generally quite good, although I did prefer the opening Donnie Yen w/spear vs Jet Li w/sword fight over any of the later ones. Nice movie overall, though. And aside from just being beautiful, Maggie Cheung has such a compelling, cinematic face and screen presence---you can't take your eyes off her. The fight between her and Zhang Ziyi among the fallen leaves was like a painting brought to life.
wendersfan
05-09-04, 10:19 PM
I've seen it several times. There are numerous threads on this film; you might want to do a search.
rushmore223
05-10-04, 03:13 AM
Originally posted by wendersfan
I've seen it several times. There are numerous threads on this film; you might want to do a search.
I Did do a search, I came up with a thread about the trailer for this film on Kill Bill. Nothing else contained any direct thread on this subject.
Do a search yourself and see what you find.
Not to be rude, but I get tired of people saying I should do a search on this topic first, when I already had and I came up with nothing substantive.
Do I have to begin every thread with, "I did a search and couldnt find much on this topic, so hear I go" ?
Oh well, please, trust me, at this point, I do searches regularly. Just get tired of people telling me to do them.
Trigger
05-10-04, 04:56 AM
I just did a search for simply the word "hero" and had it search in thread titles only and came up with half a dozen or so threads in the last month. then I set the date to "any date" and came up with like 40 Hero threads. I think you just need to learn how to use the search properly rather than complain about other people bitching at you.
DVD Smurf
05-10-04, 12:10 PM
Excellent story, well written, cinematography is excellent, F/X are great, terrific cast, and brilliant cinematic experience...
In other words: :up:
My Review (http://www.cinematica.org/archives/h/hero_2002.htm)
Cheers :beer:
DVD Smurf :)
MrN
05-10-04, 12:16 PM
Excellent film all around.
BTW, Zhang Yimou's next film is also of the same genre (wuxia), "House of Flying Daggers" and will be playing at this year's Cannes.
rushmore223
05-10-04, 01:05 PM
Originally posted by Trigger
I just did a search for simply the word "hero" and had it search in thread titles only and came up with half a dozen or so threads in the last month. then I set the date to "any date" and came up with like 40 Hero threads. I think you just need to learn how to use the search properly rather than complain about other people bitching at you.
If the only Hero thread that is less than a month old is the thread about the trailer, then I don't know what the complaint is about.
Thats like me posting a thread about Vertigo after searching, only to have someone complain cause there were a few threads about it in the past year or so. It's not like there arent 500 threads about Kill Bill or Matrix or Lord of the rings floating around here at any one time.
By the way, I got about a dozen thread results too, but none had anything to do with what I was posting. All but one were threads where someone mentioned hero, but the topic was about something else.
I dont want to turn this thread into a back and forth attack, I just think some people need to relax a little. It's not like we are inundated with lots of threads about this movie, am I wrong?
RichC2
05-10-04, 01:42 PM
It was alright. I greatly disliked the use of CG effects in the movie - they came across as more distracting than complimentary. The plot and characterizations were decent and the was action good. I'd recommend it, but it isn't really worth "going out of your way" to see. But I suppose to each their own.
On that note, House of Flying Daggers looks beautiful :D
Buy: