The Classics of Kung Fu Film: Hero, Starred by Jet Li

The famous director Zhang Yi-mou had directed many well-received motion pictures such as the film ‘Red Sorghum’, ‘Ju Dou, ‘Raise the Red Lantern’, but actually, the Chinese film director didn’t attract mainstream attention in the West until he tried his hand at the Kung Fu films, then in 2002, he made the film ‘Hero’ , which starred by Jet Li and Donnie Yen.

Very fortunately, Jet Li also persuaded Zhang to resurrect the Hero project and finish the film. As we know, Jet Li’sfilms are mostly Kung Fu films, so her was also invited to star this movie, In the movie, which boasted a $17-million budget, Donnie Yen plays Lone Sky Iron Shield, part of a trio of assassins trying to kill Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, the infamous dynastic figure who fought to unify China during the third century B.C. Jet Li plays Qin’s bodyguard.

Jet Li told the reporter before heading to China to film that he loved the script so much that when he finished reading it, he cried twice because his character Nameless has strong feelings about what’s going on, Jet Li also expressed that in his career, it’s the first script that made him cry. It’s an incredible story where drama is first and action is there to help the story.

The unique aspect of the Jet Li in Hero is certainly the way they fight without fighting. According to kung fu folklore, martial artists with powerful chi could sit in front of each other, send their spirits out of their bodies and have the spirits fight. A fighter died if his spirit died during the fight. This is the first time most Americans had seen this on-screen.

In some ways, the success of these two different approaches was measured at the box office. Hero became the first foreign-language film to open at No. 1 in the United States. It went on to gross $53 million.