Hero is 20 y.o.
On October 24, 2002, Zhang Yimou's film "Ying xiong 英雄 (Hero)" was released in theaters in China.
According to one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev,
"Zhang Yimou harbored hopes of creating ... a philosophical work of the Confucian persuasion, which would deal with the problem of choosing between life and death, the right of one person (the killer) to determine the fate of another person (the emperor). "
For this purpose, Zhang Yimou used Ying Zheng, the ruler of the Qin kingdom, as one of the main characters in his film narrative.
Let me remind you that Ying Zheng ascended the throne of the kingdom of Qin in 245 BC at the age of 13. By the time of his accession, China was a collection of 7 kingdoms that had been in a state of brutal and bloody war of all against all for two hundred years. By the age of 39, Ying Zheng had conquered all the other 6 kingdoms one by one and thus, for the first time in the history of China, created a centralized state under the rule of the Qin Dynasty. At the same time, he assumed the title Qin Shi Huang, which means "the founding emperor of the Qin dynasty." Naturally, the conquest of the above-mentioned kingdoms was accompanied by unthinkable cruelty, as a result of which Qin Shi Huang quite rightly expected attempts on his life by assassins representing the defeated kingdoms.
In early 2003, Zhang Yimou's film "Hero" received a nomination for the American Golden Globe Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category. However, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association favored Pedro Almodovar's movie "Hable con ella (Talk to Her)". The company of the losers of Zhang Yimou's film, among others, was the Brazilian film "Cidade de Deus (City of God)" directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. A little later, the film "Hero" was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. But the American Film Academy preferred the German film "Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa)" directed by Caroline Link. Here Zhang Yimou's film was accompanied by the Finnish film "Mies vailla menneisyyttä (A Man Without a Past)" directed by Aki Kaurismäki. Finally, in the same 2003, Zhang Yimou's film "Hero" was nominated for the Golden Bear of the Berlin International Film Festival. But the jury of this film festival, chaired by Canadian film director Atom Egoyan, considered the rather mediocre British film "In This World" directed by Michael Winterbottom to be more worthy of the highest award. Although among the nominees for the Golden Bear, in addition to "Hero", there were such very worthy films as, for example, "Goodbye, Lenin!" by Wolfgang Becker, "The Hours" by Stephen Daldry, "The Life of David Gale" by Alan Parker, "Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai)" by Yôji Yamada.
A curious assessment of this ignoring of Zhang Yimou's film was given by a Russian film critic Katya Tarkhanova:
"the absence of prizes in the presence of Oscar nominations and directing during the Berlin Festival is the recognition of the "Hero" as too beautiful for festivals, for the Oscar and for our life in general."
The overwhelming majority of professional film critics have given Zhang Yimou's film "Hero" very laudatory reviews. For example, Stephen Hunter, a columnist for the influential Washington Post, wrote in his review:
"It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong. But let's save the wrong stuff till the end; the upfront message is more than 90 minutes of gushy joy, of old-time movie pleasures."
In almost every review, the staging of martial arts fights and the use of various colors are noted as the main content of the picture. In this regard, the assessment of the film made by Roger Ebert is interesting, who gave the film 3.5 stars out of four possible:
"Hero" demonstrates how the martial arts genre transcends action and violence and moves into poetry, ballet and philosophy. It is violent only incidentally. What matters is not the manner of death, but the manner of dying: In a society that takes a Zen approach to swordplay and death, one might win by losing. There is an ancient martial arts strategy in which one lures the opponent closer to throw him off balance, and yields to his thrusts in order to mislead him. This strategy works with words as well as swords. One might even defeat an opponent by dying -- not in the act of killing him, but as a move in a larger game."
The film's budget was $31 million, making it the most expensive Chinese film at the time of release. At the same time, the cost of the picture does not take into account the colossal support provided by the Chinese state. For example, the soldiers of the Qin army were "played" by real soldiers of the People's Liberation Army of China. According to some estimates, 18 thousand people were used as extras in the film and, of course, completely free of charge.
The assessment of Zhang Yimou's film "Hero" by ordinary moviegoers is characterized by the following figures: box office receipts almost 6 times exceeded the record budget, amounting to 177 million dollars. Including, 53 million dollars was collected in the USA, which put this film in third place in terms of collections among all foreign films shown in the USA. At the time of its release on the American screen, the film ranked first among foreign films in the American box office. In Russia, the film was released in theaters in May 2003 and grossed just under $300,000. But, for example, such a "movie masterpiece" as "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde", released in the same 2003, which rating on IMDB did not reach 5, collected more than 1.3 million dollars in Russia. Once again I ask myself: how can we explain such a disproportion, the specific tastes of the Russian audience or the purposeful actions of Russian film distributors?
In terms of audience ratings given by IMDB and Kinopoisk users, 69% of ratings are 8, 9, and 10. Based on this indicator, Zhang Yimou's "Hero" has a rating of 8,303 according to FilmGourmand version, placing it in 410th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
