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Man Called Hero's biggest problem is its lack of focus.
The movie meanders from one plot to another, returns to a
previous plot to tie up loose ends, then meanders to tie up
another loose plot, while leaving a half dozen other plots
unresolved. At slightly over 90 minutes, a movie with too much
on its mind and not enough concentration to focus its energies,
a short running time is the kiss of death.
Hero stars
Ekin Cheng as the titular Hero Hua (an improbable name, but
let's go with it), who must flee China after he kills a
foreigner who murdered his parents. The movie itself is set in
the early 20th century, with title cards telling us
it's somewhere around 1916, and almost 30 years had passed since
the last Opium War in 1882. The movie shifts into something of a
social movie once Hero arrives in America. Hero, along with
other Chinese immigrants, is sent to steel mining camps which
looks more like prisons than actual work camps.
There really is nothing too complex or even
exciting going on in Hero, and the final fight on the
Statue of Liberty, where Lady Liberty herself is royally
trashed, reeks of unnecessary destruction. As an American, I
find the wanton destruction of the Statue of Liberty as some
kind of "cool" action stunt to be somewhat insulting. There
really was no reason to destroy Lady Liberty unless the
director/writer/filmmakers were trying to make some anti-Lady
Liberty statement. Perhaps as a revenge fantasy for the
treatment of early Chinese immigrants to this country?
Hero, as previously mentioned, lacks
focus. The movie has no idea what it wants to be. A socially
aware movie about the plight of early Chinese? Could be, because
we spend plenty of time with Hero in the work camps and there is
a "liberation" of the work camp later in the movie. Like many
Hong Kong movies that I've seen, the screenwriters seem to be
writing two movies -- one about a movie that takes place in Acts
One and Two, and then a second movie that takes up Act Three.
A Man Called Hero also employs the
same special effects as recent movies such as
The Storm Riders and Tsui Hark's
Legend of Zu. But unlike those two movies, Hero seems
to be on a budget, almost as if after having spent so much money
re-constructing New York's Chinatown, the filmmakers ran out of
money for the special effects. There are only two real special
effects heavy scenes, one when Hero and a character name Shadow
fights a group of Japanese ninjas in an alley, and then later
when Hero fights Invincible, the movie's chief villain who pops
up halfway through, at the aforementioned trashing of the Statue
of Liberty.
Here is an example of the movie's unfocused
and meandering plots: Hero's wife, Jade, gives birth to twins,
but throughout the movie, we only see Sword Hua, Hero's son, as
he attempts to locate his father, who has been missing for the
last 16 years. The other twin is a girl who was kidnapped at
birth by a character name Bigot. Supposedly the girl is still
out there, and everyone seems to be looking for her, but by the
movie's end, nothing is ever mentioned of her, as if everyone
simply forgot that she ever existed. Even Bigot is killed off
without being given the chance to confess the location of the
twin girl. Actually, Bigot is exploded by Hero. The twin girl
plot is simply forgotten after that point.
Incidentally enough, I find the Hero Hua
character to be somewhat of a bore, and wish more was shown of
the Shadow character, who actually had some "cool" factor.
Except for his lightsaber (er, I mean, his red sword that
glows), Hero Hua really has no personality to speak off. With
his hair draped over half of his face, he looks like a manga
character trapped in a movie, but still believing he's in a
2-dimensional manga book. How else do you explain his total lack
of charisma?
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