Miramaxed Out; It's Been a Long Time Coming, but This Hero Wasn't Necessarily Worth Waiting For.

Summary

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In the meantime, [Zhang Yimou]'s embattled picture is, by most counts, the single most bootlegged movie in cinema history. (I'm seriously the only person I know who doesn't own the damn DVD already.)

Nameless is summoned to explain exactly how he took only a couple of days to get rid of the king's most fearsome enemies. Long Sky (Iron Monkey's Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Hard-Boiled's super-badass Tony Leung) and Flying Snow (Hong Kong megastar Maggie Cheung) were allegedly slain within a week by this meek peasant warrior. The mighty [Qin] wants details.

Every one of Hero's tiny tall tales has its own weirdly specific hue. (You can drive yourself batty trying to figure out what every color is supposed to symbolize.) These characters' sartorially unified costumes and surroundings constantly change according to who's telling what lie to whom, so we're treated to marvelous sequences during which everything is red, everything is blue, everything is white, etc.

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Miramaxed Out; It's Been a Long Time Coming, but This Hero Wasn't Necessarily Worth Waiting For.

One of the most sumptuously photographed movies you'll ever see, Zhang Yimou's visually breathtaking, narratively klutzy and politically sickening martial arts epic Hero is at long last being dumped onto a thous...

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