Hero [Blu-ray]

visually stunning superb film

This film is in my top ten films that anyone should watch. This is the first time I've seen hero on bluray and I was in awe at how beautiful it looked. Hero is all about the colour and themes in each scene and the high resolution makes all those little details stand out all the more adding to the immersion experience.Add to that the sound which is crisp and clear without being brash. The surround sound is perfect and has a real cinema feel to it. This bluray has clearly had a lot of work gone into it.The film it's self is not your average sword play movie, it has a deep and twisting plot with characters that you can really relate to. Each scene has been directed with such care and thought that it truly shows on screen. A must watch whether it's your first sword play film or your hundredth this will not disappoint.

first of all; i will not write anything about the movie itself. just about the quality of the blu ray.picture quality differs from 3,5 - 4,5 out of 5. wide angle shots definitely lack some sharpness, but the closer the camera gets the better the sharpness becomes. a few close-ups get a 4,5. but this is rare.the colours are strong and powerful with a good contrast overall. wide angel shots show some(!) blurriness. compared with the previous releases on dvd this blu ray it a BIG improvement picture quality wise.sound quality is the BIG negative (but this is complaining on a higher level). the DTS-Master-Soundtrack excists only as a dubbed english soundtrack, which is so poorly crafted i cannot find the words for it. the effects and music-score kick some a**, but the dubbed dialogue is only there for a good laugh (that's my opinion). so the 5.1 dolby digital chinese soundtrack kick some a** as well, but definitely doesn't even come close to the lossless track. guess the chinese soundtrack was used on all the dvds before, so not so much of an improvement on the sound part.there are some extras as well, which i didn't really check so far. some making-of featurette, fight scene featurette, storyboards and something else. guess there is like one hour of extras on it.overall i'd give 3,8 stars for the picture quality and sound quality. that's closer to 4 than to 3 and with a bonus for the movie itself the blu ray deserves 4 stars! sell your dvd (if you still get something for it) and get this blu ray. it's a fair upgrade!

Great film.

This is one of the best martial arts films of recent times. It's a gem.You just can't take your eyes off the screen from start to finish. It's astonishingly beautiful. Colour, texture, design, nature, calligraphy, movement, dance - everything ravishes the senses. And it has Ziyi Zhang in it. Enough said.But there's more than visuals. A delicious, complex, fluid plot with plenty intrigue and mystery. The play on the idea of truth and reality versus storytelling, keeps us alert and striving to keep up.Then there's the use of sound. The fight scene with the dripping water and the koto - the sounds will stay with me for life.The martial arts scenes are really very good. But perhaps the calligraphy scenes are even better?I found the ending a little hard to understand. Perhaps it was not the strongest part of the film - unsure.I can watch this one again and again.At least 4 and 1/2 stars.

Quentin Tarantino presents Chinese director Zhang Yimou production of Hero, a story of how three different assassins sent by the Emperor are beaten by a mysterious swordsman who is played by Jet Li, the stories of how he defeats the three assassins is told in a series of flashbacks, the director Yimou embraces the vibrancy and pageantry of the Chinese court of the third century B.C. to tell this eye-popping martial arts epic.This movie is so beautiful it makes your jaw drop and the action sequences are genuine pieces of invention and are absolutely dazzling this DVD is presented in the original Mandarin with 5.1 surround sound with subtitles and is also in Dolby surround dubbed into English and the aspect is 2.35:1 wide-screen.This DVD is a favourite of mine to test both sound and picture of hardware such as DVD players and TV sets another one for the collection to keep.

Certainly one of the best films I have ever seen and in terms of choreography, set design and colour - 'the' best.The fight sequences are visually stunning and are deliberately exagerated and made to look surreal which emphasises the fact that the contests are basically metaphysical and the defeated combatants are defeated at their own choice, not by superior fighting technique. The english dubbing is good to have but suggest you watch in Chinese with sub-titles which gives more oriental flavour to the proceedings.The story is based on a dramatised true tale of the attempted assasination of the King at the time of the uniting of the chinese dynasties around two thousand years ago. I was not familiar with the story and although the plot is well explained by the conversations between the King and his would be assasin there are still several twists and turns I havn't yet worked out. - What better reason to sit down and enjoy it again.!

Nearly perfect artistic depiction of traditional Chinese combat arts.