hero

You may very well be as excited as I am about Quentin Tarantino’s Hero, which opens tonight. The obvious comparisons have been made to Crouching Tiger and with varying degrees of approval. Where Crouching Tiger has warmth, they say, Hero has cold revenge. Where Tiger is engaging Hero is awe-inspiring. It’s all splitting hairs really. If you can appreciate a movie for sheer visual brilliance dressing up a fairly simple story then you should be just fine. I am one of those people so I’m really looking forward to this.

Interestingly Quentin has absolutely nothing to do with this flick. When Miramax wanted to shelf it, he stepped in and championed it, pointing out that it has been an almost unparalleled success in China and most of the rest of the world. North America, typically behind the times with the international scene, has been waiting for two years while Miramax hmmd and haad. They wanted to edit it for length and Quentin told them they were silly dumbheads. Well, he should have. The more I hear about the command decisions at Miramax the more I wonder how they’re still around. But never mind that.

As I was saying, aside from stapling his name to the marquee as “Quentin Tarantino presents…” he has nothing to do with the project, which nonetheless has an internationally star studded cast of thousands. One has to wonder if Miramax agreed to blow the project out so long as Quentin agreed to attach his name to it. Hmm. Frankly, I didn’t need a supertar’s name in Tiger‘s credits to get me in the theatre (twice) and I wouldn’t need it for Hero, but I have to confess that when I saw the his name leading the trailer while waiting for Kill Bill II to start I was immediately interested. This would have been a huge stylistic departure for him.

So if it took the heavy hand of star-power to get this one into domestic theatres I’m fine with that. I won’t object. I’m just glad it’s here.

I’m thinking we should go. Do you think Saturday night would be too soon? An early show followed by some hijinx of some kind? Lemme know.