Hero

Hero is a wonderfully vibrant 2002 martial arts film. The film was directed by Zhang Yimou and is somewhat based on the legendary Jing Ke. The film casts famous martial arts actors such as Jet Li, the nameless protagonist, Maggie Cheung who plays Flying Snow, Tony Leung Chui-Wai as Broken Sword, Donnie Yen as Long Sky and Chen Daoming plays King of Qin.

The film starts off with Jet Li arriving at the royal capital to claim his reward for defeating King of Qin's most feared enemies. The movie tells the story through flashbacks as Li tells the King how he defeated all the assassins and the journey he undertook in order to save the country from collapsing.

Li tells the King how he killed Sky at Weiqi parlor and then traveled to the state of Zhao to find Flying Snow and Broken Sword. He finds them at a calligraphy school where they were living. The two assassins were lovers and so Li uses this against them. He tells both of them that he has killed Sky and that his dying words were for Snow to avenge his death as his illicit mistress. A heartbroken Sword then has sex with Moon (Zhang Ziyi) while Snow watches. Snow then kills Sword which leads to Moon avenging her master, Sword, by killing Snow. However, Moon is killed by Snow and Snow later duels Li and is killed.

The King tells Li that he believes Li is lying and presents him with his own story of what he thinks happened. Li was actually sent to kill the King but when he is about to he sees Broken Sword's scroll behind the King's throne that explains an ideal warrior is one who should paradoxically have no desires to kill people. When Li realizes the meaning of the scroll he lets the King live. The movie is a story within a story and keeps true to the real meaning of peace for all.