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Jet Li leads the way

In one, Nameless and Sky meet in a spectacular duel that's as much a match between their minds as it is between their blades. In another, Nameless helps Broken Sword and Flying Snow defend a calligraphy school from the oncoming forces of the king's warriors. This involves deflecting relentless torrents of arrows that are launched in a siege that resembles the ferocity of The Two Towers' Battle of Helm's Deep. Nameless opposes this siege in order to gain the killers' trust, to learn their weakness, and to defeat them using their own passions for one another. Zhang Ziyi, sporting the same youthful ego and impertinence that she portrayed in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, plays a key role here as Broken Sword's servant, Moon. Two more astonishing clashes—one a breathtaking ballet in a storm of falling yellow leaves, the other a battle on the surface of a magnificent lake—are each worth the price of admission; it's unlikely you'll see anything so memorable all year.

But the most important clash is the one between the hero's narratives and the king's questioning. Nameless is clearly superior to those whose weapons he has claimed and set down before the king. But what has made him such an unparalleled warrior? And what will he ask of the king now that he has performed this feat as a volunteer?

To say more about the plot would be to spoil the story's most interesting twist. And besides, there is much to say in honor of the cast and crew.

Jet Li is Nameless in this gorgeous cinematic feast

Nameless is a perfect role for Jet Li. The part asks little of his acting talents (fortunately) and much from his athletic abilities. Similarly, Donnie Yen (Blade II, Shanghai Knights) turns Sky into a man who gets right down to business, letting his sword do the talking.

The juiciest roles go to Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, who earned acclaim for playing as the leads of Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love. Here, they embody one of the most tempestuous romances in the annals of film. United with a passion for excellence both in art and in combat, but divided by political ambitions, Broken Sword and Flying Snow swoon, argue, duel, dance, and smash each others' hearts to pieces. Their director intensifies their emotions with colorful backdrops—blood reds, emerald greens, the white of sun-bleached sands. Are there any American actors who are as multi-talented as Leung, Cheung, and Zhang Ziyi, able to move our hearts, tantalize our minds, and then kick our butts with acrobatic fight scenes? They don't just deserve Oscars—give them Olympic medals!

But the true masters of the show are Zhang Yimou and his cinematographer Christopher Doyle (The Quiet American, In the Mood for Love). They find rarely seen backdrops in China that rival the New Zealand landscapes of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.

Zhang gets a lot of support from Oscar-winner Emi Wada's extraordinary costume design. Production designer Tingxiao Huo brings this ancient world to life, so that the armies riding through the gates of the cities seem to be charging right out of the history books. Itzhak Perlman's soulful violin stands out against the stormy backdrop of the Kodo Drummers's drums in Tan Dun's soundtrack. (The themes are too similar to his work for Crouching Tiger, but then again, they're perfectly suited to the material.)

Zhang Ziyi plays the role of Moon

Zhang has a long list of marvelous films, including Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, both of which earned him Oscar nominations, and the recent, romantic short story The Road Home. He calls To Live (1994) his most important movie, and it's true—that epic about family and hardship in Chinese history is his most accomplished work of storytelling. But Hero is his masterpiece of visual imagination.

While it is almost impossible to discuss Hero without comparing it to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, that's only because American viewers are unfamiliar with a genre called wuxia—a decades-old tradition of Chinese martial arts films. If they must be compared, yes, both feature warriors with the supernatural abilities to run up walls and bound through the treetops; but Crouching Tiger is more melancholy and romantic, whereas the action and spectacle in Hero make Ang Lee's film look like a high school play.

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