Quentin Tarrentino has been giving the American public action films for over 10 years now but this time he brings a movie from China to US shores for all to view. Hero directed by Yimou Zhang was originally put in theatres overseas in 2002 but just recently came out on DVD in the states and features a great cast of Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen and Maggie Chung.  

The plot consists of Li playing a nameless warrior (no really he's in the credits as nameless) who wants to bring a nation together and takes an empire to get it done despite them having three of deadly killers a.k.a. assassins and an army of soldiers ready to die for their cause. Yen (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) plays one of the assassins Sky and Chung and veteran Tony Lueng play longtime love interests Flying Snow and Broken Sword who are also assassins.

The interesting part of the film is the fact that Nameless (Li) tells the King of Qin (played by Daoming Chen) of the tale because the King was initially skeptical of the defeat of these assassins when hearing from a local dignitary.

The cinematography is great and the fight scenes are as well although the flying is starting to get old. The plot is slow to develop and you may need to see it more than once to get the movie. The DVD is short on features just a conversation with Quentin Tarrentino and Jet Li, storyboards and a short called "Hero Defined".  

I'll give the film 3 globes. Cinematography alone doesn't carry the film in my eyes and while the actors were real in their characterizations I still felt the film ended to predictably and very short (time and plot-wise) of an adventure of this title's magnitude.