Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

I think Hero is one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen. The use of colour, slow motion, moving fabric and closeups of water absolutely blew me away. In particular, I loved the use of rain at the end of the fight with Sky, and the way every time there was a new version of the Flying Snow/Broken Sword flashback, the colours were different. The end of the first version of this flashback – with the red clothes and the autumn leaves – was also wonderful.

The plot was actually very slight, and yet at the same time it was quite compelling in its simplicity. It took me a while to get caught up in it, and except for the end I found the non-flashback scenes less interesting (probably because they were less stylised), but I was totally gripped by the flashbacks. I did sometimes feel that the scenes lasted a tiny bit longer than I would have liked, but I suspect this is more a reflection of my attention span than of the quality of the movie.