Definitions:

whooh onomatopoeia ; sound made by swinging swords, arms, legs, and all forms of sticks or poles ( with, or without metal appendages )in martial arts movies. Sometimes associated with arrows. Usually repeated at least 3 times. whooh whooh whooh

whowh onomatopoeia; sound made by magically flying protagonists and or antagonists, often found in the Wuxia sub-genre of martial arts films, as they hurl toward their enemy, often somersaulting during the approach. Often repeated at least twice, corresponding to the number of summersaults. whowh whowh

woah onomatopeoeia; sound made by audience when witnessing spectacular choreography and sumptuous cinematography often associated with the Wuxia sub-genre of martial arts films. Sometimes repeated twice, once for choreography, and then for cinematography. woah…

*Potential spoilers for the broad strokes of the plot. If you haven't seen this yet and are looking for a quick reason to check it out, it has some of the most beautiful photography outside of a Terrence Malick picture. If you like kung-fu movies and don't mind "wire-fu" then you'll probably like Hero.*

"A warrior's ultimate act is to lay down his sword."

Hero is a historical wuxia, or a king-fu period piece, but the battles between warriors stand in for a more important battle happening beneath the surface of the film. The fight scenes are highly choreographed and excessively stylized (a practice commonly referred to as "wire-fu"), and this gives them a mythical quality that indicates they may…

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Film #20 of the "Scavenger Hunt 2" Challenge!
Task #26 : A film from the wuxia genre!
letterboxd.com/naughty/list/scavenger-hunt-2/

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The fight scenes were as visually stunning as they were superbly choreographed! Literally a martial arts ballet where stylistic violence translates into pure poetry on the big screen!

While our nameless hero recounts his tale of defeating his first assassin the rain ceased being an element of nature and became one of the films most formidable stars!

When our hero recounts his tale of defeating the last two assassins arrows take center stage, soaring gracefully through the air till it meets its destiny within soft meaty flesh!

Colors play a huge part in depicting mood, emotion and tone of the…

A Rashomonian wuxia made by the person who brought us the bright, crisp melancholy of Raise the Red Lantern, this film more or less could not fail. Though one of its themes, as far as I can follow them, seem to be about sacrifice for greater ideals in unsettling nationalistic terms, the more intriguing idea of a warrior who is unwilling to kill, this paradoxical philosophy of strength through unwielded power, overwhelms the downside. More so, though, the beautiful dance of blade, elements, and environment that this film is dominated by puts everything else to shame.

There are some who might sully this film with the qualifier that it's "cool." Those people are boorish fools. "Cool" is for pop-art and…

There’s a little making-of featurette on the Miramax DVD of Hero that has some decent interviews with the cast and crew along with some breathless Hollywood narration. Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Donnie Yen speak impeccable English, which makes one wonder what might have been if Hollywood wasn’t so racist and dumb, while Ching Siu-tung sports some questionably-dyed hair and Christopher Doyle complains about the lack of bars in the remote deserts of Western China. After the usual rigamarole about shooting challenges and directorial perfectionism, someone asked Zhang Yimou what he thought the film was about, which he either answered honestly or deftly dodged by asserting that what he wanted people to take from the film, long after they’ve forgotten…

Obviously visually incredible, the color-coding of sequences is GENIUS, the action choreography stunning, sound design as well. The structure is a little unwieldy, though, and the "that's a lie, this is what really happened" Rashomon-esque nature of it left me uninvested in a lot of the action despite its gorgeousness. And despite featuring one of my holy triumvirates of Chinese actors (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, plus Jet Li and Donnie Yen as icing on the cake), it's definitely not as emotionally investing as Raise the Red Lantern (actually the only other Zhang I've seen, but I adore it) or The Grandmaster, which works in a similar (art-house take on traditional martial arts film) vein. The overt nationalism…

Films work to specialize their techniques and content according to the genre to which they belong. An action movie will theoretically have good action, as well as a horror movie, which will try to convey that emotion effectively. The case of martial arts is no different, and the risk of making mistakes is present once filmmakers work so tirelessly at that point that the rest of the story can be neglected until it can be forgotten.

That problem occurs in movies like "Showdown", (1993) "Return of the Dragon", or "3 Ninjas". But there are excellent martial arts films like "Kill Bill, Vol. 1", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and “Raise The Red Lantern”, (1992) whose focus is on developing the profile…