Being a big fan of Tsui Hark films, I had been looking forward to this film for a long time, and even though Leon Lai is in the movie, I still thought it would be watchable.
The film was shot quite beautifully, with certain scenes showing some fantastic imagery. However, do not take this to mean that the film was full of beautiful landscapes, no. The way the film was shot was matched fully well with the barren lands that the majority of the scenes take place in.
The music was captivating and suited the moment when you actually noticed it was playing. In my opinion, the typical 'Hero' theme in this film was a perfect mix of cheesiness and just plain, pure brilliance.
The fight scenes were fast and furious, but sometimes, due to the camera work, it was difficult to see what had become of the amazing choreography.
At this particular moment in time, I can only really think of two bad things about the film, the first being pacing and the second being the timeline/editing. The film tends to jump from scene to scene fairly well, but there were certain moments where it is obvious that something was missing, be it dialogue or scenes, and this made the pacing factor unbearable as it seemed forever for the film to get anywhere.
Overall though, I guess if you like wuxia movies, then this might appeal to you, but I still feel quite doubtful that this would actually appeal to a larger audience.
The swords are awesome by the way.... ;) Let's hope that they release a better DVD version though...
