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Miramax re-releases a beautiful film on DVD and Blu Ray. Are the deficiencies of the old release gone for good? 

It’s very hard to impress – really, truly impress me - with a film these days. I’ve seen so many, and the tropes of a particular style or genre become so prevalent, that it’s almost impossible to really take me by surprise. I can only think of two occasions as a grown adult where I’ve had my expectations blown away. One was The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, a film I expected to loathe because of its length and the fact I had (at that time) never made it through the books. The other was HERO. I went with my parents when it opened, having heard some positive word of mouth and a few mutterings about “myths and legends.” I don’t remember quite what I was expecting: something of a fantasy nature, perhaps, with action sequences and some pretty costumes.

“Wow,” I said when the lights came up. “Wow. Wow.”

For about the next day, I couldn’t really define what it was that impressed me so much about HERO. On the surface level, of course, is the beautiful cinematography and the art design that emphasizes strong, rich colors. The performances are strong, the battles are lovingly choreographed and the musical score, in turns both pounding and frail, richly complements the visual illusion that we are being taken back into an indeterminate time, “long ago.” From a strictly Anglo-American viewpoint, Mandarin Chinese is a beautiful and complex language to hear. Yet none of these things individually serves to “make” the film. They all work in tandem at a more primitive level than a typically see in film; no one element can be singled out as the best. Together, they create a sort of tone poem, or meditation, on the philosophy of history. In HERO, we are told three different versions of how things might have occurred, and the crux of the film revolves around what will be remembered: which man, in the historical overview, is labeled the hero? Which is the villain? And when the dust has settled, how will that story be told?

You don’t see this kind of philosophical storytelling often in American cinema – particularly not in an action film – so it’s perhaps inevitable that the film was marketed under the name of Quentin Tarantino, with heavy emphasis on the “fights.” Even those are often more lyrical and literal – two occur in the participants’ minds, and several more emphasize the futility of fighting against progress. These fights have purpose. I’m sure the film benefited from deliberate misrepresentation through advertizing, but the question begs: if HERO was promoted as it really was, would Americans have bothered to see it? It intrigues me that out of all the people I’ve talked to, those who express the most dislike of the film tend to be young men. They want more fights, more action, more “heroism.” But in my opinion, HERO isn’t about any of those things. It intentionally undercuts them by asking whom we choose to label a hero, and why. American marketing may have sold the tickets, but it also may have led some people to want a different film. That’s fine; we all like what we like. I, for one, was happy to bask in my new-found glow of wow.

Unfortunately, Miramax’s old presentation of HERO was anything but wow. Their translation of Chinese into English subtitles was already a bit dodgy – look at the DVD Beaver website, for instance, to see some examples of the American translation versus the English subtitles in the rest of the world. The Miramax translation often simplifies concepts to the point they no longer make sense. Re-labeling Broken Sword’s sand-drawn message as “One Land” is almost childish: of course China will be one land when the Emperor unites it together. The more literal translation of the ancient word for China, “All Under Heaven,” is used in the English subtitles for the rest of the world; that phrase restores an aspect of philosophy to Broken Sword’s message, speaking as it does to the literal geography but to aspects of religious thought and the homogenizing power of history. We are all human from the perspective of a higher power; we are all lumped together by history books once we are dead and gone. “All Under Heaven” also implies the sheer breadth of the size of China: when all you can see around you are other people just like you, does it not make sense you would all speak the same language?

The death knell really came, however, with Miramax’s visual presentation. The blues on their old DVD were so off it isn’t even funny; rocks, soldiers’ uniforms, even architecture took on an unnaturally blue tinge which ruined the careful chromatic organization of the film. Ultimately, in a very rare instance, I decided to forego the DVD in my native region and order one from Japan. My copy of HERO has both the improved subtitles and a far more balanced color palette. Here’s the question: does Miramax’s new “Special Edition” go the distance in correcting either of these faults for Region 1?

HERO: Special Edition comes to us from Miramax; it is available on both DVD and Blu-Ray. (This review is based upon the DVD presentation.) Unfortunately, Miramax has not in any way satisfied my concerns regarding the color palette of the film. Instead, they’ve just upped the contrast. Reds are significantly stronger in this anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer than in the original, 2004 DVD - note, for instance, the strong scarlet of Maggie Cheung’s collar early in the film, which was previously far more orange – but I am concerned this is something of an artificial conceit. The big giveaway is in skin tones: everyone is simply way too red, right down to the shadows caused by noses. Many of the strong “red” shots appear blown out and bleeding on both of my televisions, losing some amount of detail and occasionally proving painful to the eye. The Blu-Ray disc is probably better prepared to handle reds of this strength. Blues, however, are of an even greater concern. There is rarely a true grey in this version of the film; the shots of the Qin army are very, very blue, which simply doesn’t make sense in the context of the film, and again, as a result of the high contrast, they can appear extremely blown-out. Here, the big give-away is in the green-centric flashback sequence: why do those mountains look so blue? It just doesn’t make sense at all.

As with the previous DVD, the original Mandarin Chinese soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, with optional English, French and Spanish stereo tracks. Optional subtitles are available in English, English for the Hearing Impaired, French and Spanish. And yes…the crappy “Our Land” translation of the film’s dialogue remains intact. Bah.

Close-Up of a Fight Scene (9 mins.) is the only proper, new featurette on this so-called “Special Edition” DVD. The focus here is on three action sequences: the famous chess house battle between Jet Li and Donnie Yen, much requested by fans after their work together in Once Upon a Time in China II; the golden forest battle between Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi; and the lake fight between Jet Li and Tony Leung. After an introduction from Quentin Tarantino, interviews with the relevant cast take us through the production of the sequences, along with behind-the-scenes material and untampered, time-coded footage of the fights. Aside, perhaps, from the chess house battle, they’re all treated way too lightly. The interviews have been taken from the same source used for the Inside the Action featurette elsewhere on this disc – which means they dates from at least 2004, maybe a bit earlier. Was Miramax really so cheap as to produce a whole new “Special Edition” around one featurette with recycled footage? Looks that way…

Soundtrack Spot (1 min.) is also new – but really, who cares about an advertisement?

The remainder of the special features is retained from the previous 2004 DVD.

HERO Defined (24 mins.) is a promotional featurette. It’s just that simple. Interviews are presented, frequently in subtitled Mandarin, with director Zhang Yimou; stars Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Dao Ming and Donnie Yen; cinematographer Christopher Doyle; action director Tony Ching Siu-Tung; and composer Tan Dun, all held together with some incredibly overbearing narration (which sounds a lot like the usual Disney promotional narration guy…and yes, that’s weird). The featurette is presented in 16 x 9, but most of the footage is matted to 2.35:1, which is a bit peculiar for this sort of thing. All oddities aside, it’s really a very typical featurette. Watch this once if you’re really interested.

The Storyboards sequences (5 mins. combined) compare short segments of finished footage to the storyboards for four major action scenes: “Golden Forest,” “Library,” “Ring of Iron,” and “Lake.” The first two of these are so bitty it’s hard to get any grasp on them before they’re over; also, both footage and storyboards are rendered so small they can be hard to see. A nice idea, imperfectly executed.

Inside the Action: A Conversation with Quentin Tarantino & Jet Li (14 mins.) feels like one of those old puff piece things you would see as a “bonus” on a VHS (“Stay tuned after the movie…”). I don’t know, perhaps that’s what it actually is. I personally find Tarantino an irritating personality – I always have – and I sometimes find myself resenting his association with Asian films he had no hand in creating, although I recognize the “Quentin Tarantino Presents” banner probably got a lot of HERO’s American audience to actually come to the cinema. Here, Tarantino’s typically…well…Tarantino, reviewing Jet Li’s martial arts career and inevitably bringing up his own film Kill Bill. HERO itself is only brought up halfway into the featurette, with a long clip of the chess house battle and Tarantino, Li, his co-stars and Asian film historian Louis Andersen telling us exactly why we should go see the picture. Hurrah.

The disc opens with trailers for Castle: The Complete First Season, Lost: The Complete First Season and The Proposal on Blu-Ray and DVD, as well as general promos for Miramax films and Blu-Ray.

HERO remains one of my absolute favorite films, a singularly beautiful meditation in bright, blazing color. HERO: Special Edition, however, is incredibly disappointing. The color palette appears to have been altered, not with loving care and attention, but by simply heightening the contrast; nobody has bothered to improve the painful translation of the Chinese dialogue; and the barely-improved special features platter is very, very weak. Unless you’ve never experienced HERO before, and there’s no way you’ll ever see a copy from another DVD region, I can’t find a way to recommend this disc – it’s simply not the way the film is meant to be seen. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

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