Hero (2002)

The East Asian Cinema(not Asian cinema,i think the use of word Asian for movies from this region hides the diversity of Asian Cinema) are famous for making movies based on marital arts.But seldom movies have the story that are relevant to the world we are living in at the moment.No one wants a never ending war but everyone wants an everlasting peace,even the most skillful warriors.Hero is one such movie which stars the famous Jet Li,along with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon fame actress Zhiang Ziyi in a supporting role.The story is set around times when China was suffering from civil wars between Great Emperors.There have been many assassination attempts on lives of  King of Qin,one of the emperor striving for a complete domination of China.The King of Qin  invites a nameless prefect( Jet Li ) for awarding him on killing three assassins named Broken Sword(Tony Cheung),Flying Snow(Maggie Cheung) and Long Sky(Donnie Yen).As the prefect tells the King how he conspired against the Assassins,the king starts to suspect the true intentions of Prefect and that is where the film starts to get interesting.
The movie cinematography is amazing.The use of bright colors and beautiful scenery of China makes the scenes alive.The music is great according to the requirement of particular scenes.But the thing that i dislike are some scenes which are impossible in real life.The beautiful scene of a sky covered with ten thousand or even more so arrows is spoiled when all those arrows are stopped by  nameless prefect and flying snow.Similarly the use of invisible wires has some what spoiled the true fun of martial arts movies.No doubt the fight scenes are brilliant, but jumps as high as 50 feet and covering a distance of 1 kilometer are not realistic no matter how good it looks.If you liked Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for its aesthetic excellence and catching storyline,you wont like to miss this one

Rating: 8/10