review for A Man Called Hero on AllMovie

Fans of director Andrew Lau's past films, such as The Storm Riders and The Duel, know just what to expect from his 1999 release A Man Called Hero. Not only does this film feature similar CGI-soaked, pumped-up, high-flying kung fu action scenes, but many of the same actors as well. What fans may not be anticipating is that this is one of the director's most mature and personal films. After a perfect comic-book style opening sequence, the film does not take off as fast as the audience may expect. It actually is not until an hour into the film that we get our first taste of action as Hero (Ekin Cheng) and his brother Shadow (Yuen Biao) battle a group of wall-climbing Japanese ninjas. While the bombastic action scenes can seem out of place next to the film's quiet tale of Chinese immigrants in early America, Lau and Manfred Wong's script holds everything neatly in place by telling the story through a series of cleverly made flashbacks. A Man Called Hero kicks into action overdrive during the final act. The climatic fight between Hero and the renegade martial artist Invincible (Francis Ng) is so exciting, one can see that it inspired the finale of Bryan Singer's first X-Men film. For a director who has often been accused of making films with far more style than substance, Andrew Lau shows with A Man Called Hero that the concept of an intriguing, intimate story is not out of his cinematic reach, and reinforces the fact that he is one of foreign cinema's most gifted filmmakers.