A Man Called Hero

1999 "Living up to his name…"
A Man Called Hero
5.7| 1h56m| en| More Info
Released: 17 July 1999 Released
Producted By: Shanghai Film Studio
Country: Hong Kong
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

After Hero Hua marries Jade and leaves her in China, he goes to America to work as a servant and rebels against cruel labour conditions. Jade soon joins him in New York, where they build a family.

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Reviews

ballazrus i've heard of this movie, but i've never really paid attention to its review, for those who enjoyed this movie...by golly, i don't know how you guys manage to but we all have our differences.this movie as most other recent HK martial arts movies (with young unexperienced actors when it comes to chinese kung fu movies) is too dependent on CGI, what's the point in watching a movie filled with CGI's??? (Computer Graphic Images), the actors gets to do nothing, the viewers is watching a bunch of incompetent scenes. they should just make the whole movie in animation, there's nothing great nor close to decent in these kind of movies (talking about Legend of Zu, Legend of Tekken, all bunch of crappy CGI movies).now if it was wire fighting, it would've been better (like yuen woo pings movies). enough of how bad the movie is, let's move on to the plot of the movieso Hero's parents are murdered and he decides to move to America, his wife becomes pregnant on the night before he moves and the wife and her brother decides to look up Hero to tell him the good news, on the day that she concieves her twins, one (the daughter) is taken away by a corrupted chinese guy co operating with the japanese ninjas that are looking for a duel with Hero and his master Pride. his wife passes away, and Hero is told to be "born under the star of death" which basically means all his dearest will meet a tragic end, which the movie has successfully implied. so he decides to stay away from all his dearests and live a lonley life. the movie either intentionally leaves some of the things incomplete for whatever reasons or it simply forgot to explain what happened to Hero's daughter. this movie reminds me of a chinese fantasy movie because of ShadowShadow depicts the same character in that fantasy movie as he is armless and carries an identical mask to cover his face and his fighting style is based on footwork and his ponytail. anyhow all in all this movie is really bad, if you absolutely find NOTHING to watch or do then fine go ahead and give this one a shot, but beware of it's absolute ridicule plot and directing.0/10, i'd rate it even lower if it had negative.
nickthegun 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
wlpeak If you reside in the real world, then this movie will strike you as naive, crude, and bigoted. Credit should be given for the attempt to set the movie outside of China, but the snarky Europeans hired to play Americans, a bunch of undersized frenchmen no doubt ;'), and the heavy handed evil Americans routine, departs from realism pretty quickly.Halfway through, the plot mutates into the martial-arts as magic universe, and though a lot of work is put into CGI effects, there is nothing here for anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last decade to write home about.We also get a dose of infantile romantic complications that would embarrass Aaron Spelling, some really cheesy music, and generally lame melodramatic scenes.My favorite, an inexplicable fastcut sequence from several angles of Hero standing in a burning building holding Jade as she dies, the music tracks dramatically with the cuts, is he trapped? ...will he die? Nope he just walks out a second later. What the...?The plot tumbles on with a Ninja vs Chinese subplot, and then for some reason climaxes with a Chinese revolt against the 'Racist men fom the Klu Klux Klan' who run a mine where Chinese workers are oppressed. Someone's been carping their history from 'The Peoples History of the US' it seems.If I had to classify this movie I'd use Sword and Sorcery with too much dialogue and dialectic.
gohmifune Well, some believe that this movie is bad, but it isn't. I found rather incredible, comparing to the Storm Riders. It has better special effects, also, the version I saw was dubbed compared to the rather dissapointing subtitles on the american DVD release of the Storm Riders. Sadly, the Strom Riders is the the only movies you can compare this to, but in many aspects this wins out. It's about the same length, with most of the same actors. The shinning points are the action, music, and the story. The story is kind of tragic in a way, but it's perfect, and doesn't leave you crying or smiling, just with you r mouth open at all the jaw dropping scenes. Though I wish it did have a lot more action, there are many fights, and they are all fantastic.To sum it up, it's a really good film, leading up to the final battle, which is the best fight scene in any live action film I have ever scene, and the fact that it takes place in some what modern America is a plus.