One Word Movie: We'll always have Nuremberg

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

We'll always have Nuremberg

If you are down the pub and too bored even to play pool, why not discuss which movie is better, Hero or House of Flying Daggers? You could even put a packet of peanuts on it. The answer is that House of Flying Daggers is superior, mainly because it avoids being a hymn to fascism.

In other aspects, Hero competes quite well. Both films try hard to replicate the experience of leafing through copies of Elle Decoration after eating too many cheeky mushrooms, but House of Flying Daggers has better fights and more of Ziyi Zhang. On the other hand, Hero nicks the plot from Kurosawa's Rashomon, which is alright, because House of Flying Daggers steals its story from dodgy episodes of Scooby-Doo.

Unfortunately, the central message of Hero is that a state should be allowed to murder its own citizens, but only so long as it's good for them. Oh yeah, and that imperialism is the best thing since the large chicken doner. It's like watching Casablanca, but with Humphrey Bogart selling Ingrid Bergman to the Nazis at the end. Or another version of The Magdalen Sisters, where the evil nuns use cheap laundry to take over County Wicklow, then Ireland and then the whole world.

It would be bad enough if Hero came from a country like Sweden. But it doesn't, it comes from China, the country that loves democracy so much that it rolls hundreds of tanks over it.

It's worth watching Hero, but unless you can somehow steal it, by sneaking into the cinema, say, perhaps entering through the fire-exit about 10 minutes after the previous show has finished, I wouldn't bother.

Today's One Word Movie is: Hero (Ying Xiong)
This Movie is: Shit