A Man Called Hero (1999)

Simply A Masterpiece

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I remember having this movie on VCD when I lived in Hong Kong, and did remember it as being a good movie, so I finally got it on DVD here in 2012. And now having seen the movie again, I must admit that the movie was not really as good as I initially remembered it to be.The story in "A Man Called Hero" takes place in the first half of the 20th century where we follow Hero Hua as he comes to America, struggling to make a living, dealing with racism, intolerance, hard labor, poor working conditions, and apparently suffering from a curse (being born under the star of death). Hero Hua and Jade have twins, but tragic events keep them from being together.The storyline in the movie was, well for lack of better words, dull. It was not really captivating and I found it hard to fully buy into it. And how come that no one had grown a day older and looked older even after 17 years had passed? They just dyed Hero Hua's hair gray and that passed for having aged 17 years? That was just ludicrous, and I was laughing so hard at this.Now that we are on goofs and mistakes in the movie. Then lets take a moment to talk about the Japanese ninjas, whom all were speaking Cantonese. Are you kidding me? They should be speaking Japanese, not Cantonese. I will say that the idea with the earth, fire and water for the ninjas was actually quite good, though. Moving on, try noticing the large clusters of dynamite that the white guy was throwing in the showdown at the work camp in the canyon, and then look at the small firecracker explosions that they produce. Hilarious.One thing that "A Man Called Hero" had working for it, was the ensemble of people on the cast list. There was a lot of big names from Hong Kong cinema here. Of course there was Ekin Cheng (playing Hero Hua), Anthony Wong (playing Pride), Shu Qi (playing Mu), Fracis Ng (playing Invincible), Sam Lee (playing Fire) and a couple more. If you are familiar with Hong Kong cinema, then you will definitely recognize a good deal of the actors and actresses here.There wasn't a whole lot of martial arts going on in the movie, so don't sit down to watch "A Man Called Hero" with the hopes for seeing something in the likes of a Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie. There is a couple of martial arts scenes and some swordplay scenes, but nowhere on the scale of movies like "Hero". I, personally, could have wanted to see more martial arts and swordplay throughout the movie. But then again, it was more of a story-driven movie, not an action-driven one."A Man Called Hero" is an adequate, although fairly standard, Hong Kong action movie from the late 90's. It might be worth a watch if you enjoy Hong Kong cinema as much as I do, or if you are a fan of any of the people on the cast list.The movie was lacking something crucial to make it unique and memorable. I am sure that it will quickly fade into nothingness in my memory and just stand on the DVD shelf as a filler in the collection.

The cover of this film claims it to be 'In the spirit of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. How dare they make such a comparison?!? The film looks no more like Crouching Tiger or, for that matter, Hero (with Jet Li) than my granny looks like Pamela Anderson. 'A man called hero' is one of those cheap and cheesy Chinese martial art films that were produced by the ton, all with unconvincing action effects. Moreover, it's stuffed with flaws. The story is of a cheap emotional level, with a weak storyboard, dumb would-be comic attempts and bad acting. In short, it's your average China movie. It's trash and bad imitation, a waste of your time and money. Skip all the surplus reviews; you'll be deceived. Trust me: there's accounting of tastes. This earns no more than a 3 on a scale of 10.

Its really hard to write a review for this kind of film. On the one hand AMCH wants to be a credible story led film. OK, So what about the story. Well it is a strange affair. On the one hand, the hardship the Chinese felt, the bad guy and his ninja squad and a lot of the quest to find hero were pretty good. But on the other hand too many loose ends are left and some things seem to happen for no reason. What's with the weird gay subplot with hero's best friend? What's up with shadow? Why didn't he try and kick invincible's ass, instead of letting 'boss' get his handed to him (I know they were played by the same person, but, hey)? And what the hell happened to Hero's daughter (I accept that it sort of implies that's his latest quest, to find her, but they could have let us know. And why did he blow up the one man who knew where she might be?)?As a martial arts film it is a strange beast. The only actual bit of traditional kung fu is when hero is showing off his talents to his prospective teacher. The rest is mostly wire work and hardcore CGI, which, for the most part, is pretty good. Shadow zips around, the Ninjas all have captain planet style powers and the face off between Pride and Invincible is awesome. But there just are not enough moments like these. I suppose ructions all the time would take away from what the director is trying to achieve (a man who hates fighting and death), but just one or two more or the existing ones eked out a bit would have been nice, if only to break up the slightly laborious pace.On the whole, though, it is hard not to like AMCH. The sets are fantastic. The costumes and cast are all uniformly good and the cinematography is superb. The plot holes are forgivable and if you want to see non-stop kung fu action, go rent an old Shaw Brothers flick. The good far outweighs the bad, as far as I'm concerned and the two-disk set is a proud edition to my DVD collection. Its far too easy to cuss up this film, simply because the typical western audience for a martial arts movie don't seem to be ready to try something different. Shaaaame

Inspired by a comic book, this sequel (of sorts) to "The StormRiders" is a plot driven, emotionally charged (well for the characters of the film but not the viewers) movie that see Hero going to America and being tracked down by a Japanese warrior wanting the "China Secret".The SFX are deliberatly saved for last, with wonderful effect, unfortuently due to the character driven plot moving at a snails pace, it ruins the film.Fortuently, a welcomed return of Yuen Biao saves the film mid-way with some good wire-enhanced fight sequencesWhilst the end fight may make you think your watching "pokemon" or something when Hero shouts out "China Secret!!" it is an enjoyable film, much like Storm Riders, but probably not as good - mainly because its boring most of the time, spending more time on sfx, and plot-driven story.If you like your action fast, and your sfx less intrusive, you may find this film out of your liking, sometimes the SFX actually gets in the way, you can't see the people fighting or connecting with hands or feet.The ending is much better than that of X-Men, and although I'm nickpicking at the movie, its a good movie, that is perhaps a bit too long on plot and too little on action.Overall: 5/10