HOFD is difficult to simply dismiss outright as a "bad" movie only because Zhang Yimou is a master craftsman who is clearly present in the work. While calling it "bad" poses some difficulties, it would be hard to understate the case for its "ain't-good"ness; for a film about which I knew literally nothing going in, I haven't been this let down in a very long time.
First and foremost--and this represents a major break by Zhang with his previous work--the film isn't *about* anything. Whereas "Hero" was, to paraphrase one of the HOFD reviewers, "exploring a profound theme in a very ambitious way," HOFD is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There are no underlying themes, grand or modest, to be found anywhere in its two hours. It's barely more than a series of random (frequently tedious) scenes thrown together. About an hour into the film, you get a "big reveal."[1] Most movie goers will, I suspect, have seen it coming from only minutes into the film--I certainly did--but when it finally arrives, you think you're about to see a major theme emerge having to do with identity. Everything has been heavy-handedly pointing toward it for a while. Unfortunately, it's dropped, immediately and permanently, and a cloying soap opera introduced, which is allowed to consume the rest of the film.
It isn't even a good soap. To be effective, a soap must be emotionally engaging on at least some level. In HOFD, the film goes out of its way to be exactly the opposite. The structure of the film denies the viewer even the most basic knowledge necessary to have any feelings at all about the characters. Everyone is lying about who they are for most of the movie, and when this is revealed, the viewer is never offered anything to fall back on. You don't know who they are, and can't feel any sympathy for them. Their very bad behavior, after the "big reveal," makes this even worse--by then, you're actively disliking them, and, before the movie is over, you just wish everyone would die. Further crippling this entire stretch of film is the Spielbergian structure adopted by the director which is constantly telling the viewer he's supposed to care about them.
Then there are the set-pieces. "Hero" was packed to the gills with fantastic set-pieces; during its running time, you were faced, on perhaps dozens of occasions, with astonishingly original and beautiful images which floated around in your mind long after the movie was over. HOFD has much more action than "Hero"--there seems to be an action sequence every three minutes or so--but it doesn't manage a single such image. Not one. The action sequences, in fact, were, almost without exception, blandly choreographed exercises in unbearable tedium. More than once, during HOFD many donnybrooks, my finger crept toward the FF button, and, at two different points, I was unable to resist the temptation. In "Hero," the fights were highly stylized; lots of wirework, emotion, close-ups. It wasn't supposed to be "realistic." It was like feelings. It was like a dance. It was like an opera. It was beautiful wuxia. In HOFD, it's like a really silly cartoon, full of awful, awful, awful CGI-"artist" masturbation of the kind that have rendered Hollywood's "summer blockbusters" unwatchable. Every battle in HOFD sees scores of badly-computer-generated arrows, swords, and daggers cut around corners, and bounce off targets only to reset themselves in midair and try again. They behave in more ridiculous fashion than the JFK "magic bullet", and the movie exploits every visual cliché in the book in displaying them--for what seems like hundreds of times, you get the standard traveling shot following a CGI weapon in the foreground to its target. "Hero" had a few moments where fights were ill-conceived (the chess parlor fight and the fight over the lake) or dragged on a bit too long (like the incredible fight in the autumnal forest). All of HOFD's fight sequences, however, looked like this.
The conclusion of this mess is just awful in every possible way, and is not in the least camouflaged by the inexplicable snow-storm Zhang threw in to try to confuse the matter. It's the sort of ending you tack on when there's no real point to anything you've just seen. There's no way to create a real ending, because, the film having told no story, there's no story to play out. Throw in some more fighting and a sudden snow-storm, and maybe no one will notice (Zhang foolishly draws attention to the Flying Dagger plot he'd so abruptly abandoned for soap by tossing in a shot of the soldiers creeping up on Flying Dagger HQ near the end--should have let us forget about them, Zhang!).
In short, HOFD looks exactly like what an upbudget Hollywood attempt to duplicate a film like "Hero" or "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" would look like. Its remarkably positive critical reception in the United States is a very damning comment on the state of contemporary film criticism. I don't deal in thumbs, and don't like numerical ratings for films. I suppose one measure of a movie's impression is whether you find yourself looking at it again. I've seen "Hero" a few times now--I don't anticipate I'll ever been sitting down to HOFD again.
[1] The "big reveal" makes rubbish out of several things you've already seen--this one would hold up really badly on subsequent viewings, when the viewer is aware of everyone's real agenda beforehand.
First and foremost--and this represents a major break by Zhang with his previous work--the film isn't *about* anything. Whereas "Hero" was, to paraphrase one of the HOFD reviewers, "exploring a profound theme in a very ambitious way," HOFD is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There are no underlying themes, grand or modest, to be found anywhere in its two hours. It's barely more than a series of random (frequently tedious) scenes thrown together. About an hour into the film, you get a "big reveal."[1] Most movie goers will, I suspect, have seen it coming from only minutes into the film--I certainly did--but when it finally arrives, you think you're about to see a major theme emerge having to do with identity. Everything has been heavy-handedly pointing toward it for a while. Unfortunately, it's dropped, immediately and permanently, and a cloying soap opera introduced, which is allowed to consume the rest of the film.
It isn't even a good soap. To be effective, a soap must be emotionally engaging on at least some level. In HOFD, the film goes out of its way to be exactly the opposite. The structure of the film denies the viewer even the most basic knowledge necessary to have any feelings at all about the characters. Everyone is lying about who they are for most of the movie, and when this is revealed, the viewer is never offered anything to fall back on. You don't know who they are, and can't feel any sympathy for them. Their very bad behavior, after the "big reveal," makes this even worse--by then, you're actively disliking them, and, before the movie is over, you just wish everyone would die. Further crippling this entire stretch of film is the Spielbergian structure adopted by the director which is constantly telling the viewer he's supposed to care about them.
Then there are the set-pieces. "Hero" was packed to the gills with fantastic set-pieces; during its running time, you were faced, on perhaps dozens of occasions, with astonishingly original and beautiful images which floated around in your mind long after the movie was over. HOFD has much more action than "Hero"--there seems to be an action sequence every three minutes or so--but it doesn't manage a single such image. Not one. The action sequences, in fact, were, almost without exception, blandly choreographed exercises in unbearable tedium. More than once, during HOFD many donnybrooks, my finger crept toward the FF button, and, at two different points, I was unable to resist the temptation. In "Hero," the fights were highly stylized; lots of wirework, emotion, close-ups. It wasn't supposed to be "realistic." It was like feelings. It was like a dance. It was like an opera. It was beautiful wuxia. In HOFD, it's like a really silly cartoon, full of awful, awful, awful CGI-"artist" masturbation of the kind that have rendered Hollywood's "summer blockbusters" unwatchable. Every battle in HOFD sees scores of badly-computer-generated arrows, swords, and daggers cut around corners, and bounce off targets only to reset themselves in midair and try again. They behave in more ridiculous fashion than the JFK "magic bullet", and the movie exploits every visual cliché in the book in displaying them--for what seems like hundreds of times, you get the standard traveling shot following a CGI weapon in the foreground to its target. "Hero" had a few moments where fights were ill-conceived (the chess parlor fight and the fight over the lake) or dragged on a bit too long (like the incredible fight in the autumnal forest). All of HOFD's fight sequences, however, looked like this.
The conclusion of this mess is just awful in every possible way, and is not in the least camouflaged by the inexplicable snow-storm Zhang threw in to try to confuse the matter. It's the sort of ending you tack on when there's no real point to anything you've just seen. There's no way to create a real ending, because, the film having told no story, there's no story to play out. Throw in some more fighting and a sudden snow-storm, and maybe no one will notice (Zhang foolishly draws attention to the Flying Dagger plot he'd so abruptly abandoned for soap by tossing in a shot of the soldiers creeping up on Flying Dagger HQ near the end--should have let us forget about them, Zhang!).
In short, HOFD looks exactly like what an upbudget Hollywood attempt to duplicate a film like "Hero" or "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" would look like. Its remarkably positive critical reception in the United States is a very damning comment on the state of contemporary film criticism. I don't deal in thumbs, and don't like numerical ratings for films. I suppose one measure of a movie's impression is whether you find yourself looking at it again. I've seen "Hero" a few times now--I don't anticipate I'll ever been sitting down to HOFD again.
[1] The "big reveal" makes rubbish out of several things you've already seen--this one would hold up really badly on subsequent viewings, when the viewer is aware of everyone's real agenda beforehand.