I remember having this movie on VCD when I lived in Hong Kong, and did remember it as being a good movie, so I finally got it on DVD here in 2012. And now having seen the movie again, I must admit that the movie was not really as good as I initially remembered it to be.The story in "A Man Called Hero" takes place in the first half of the 20th century where we follow Hero Hua as he comes to America, struggling to make a living, dealing with racism, intolerance, hard labor, poor working conditions, and apparently suffering from a curse (being born under the star of death). Hero Hua and Jade have twins, but tragic events keep them from being together.The storyline in the movie was, well for lack of better words, dull. It was not really captivating and I found it hard to fully buy into it. And how come that no one had grown a day older and looked older even after 17 years had passed? They just dyed Hero Hua's hair gray and that passed for having aged 17 years? That was just ludicrous, and I was laughing so hard at this.Now that we are on goofs and mistakes in the movie. Then lets take a moment to talk about the Japanese ninjas, whom all were speaking Cantonese. Are you kidding me? They should be speaking Japanese, not Cantonese. I will say that the idea with the earth, fire and water for the ninjas was actually quite good, though. Moving on, try noticing the large clusters of dynamite that the white guy was throwing in the showdown at the work camp in the canyon, and then look at the small firecracker explosions that they produce. Hilarious.One thing that "A Man Called Hero" had working for it, was the ensemble of people on the cast list. There was a lot of big names from Hong Kong cinema here. Of course there was Ekin Cheng (playing Hero Hua), Anthony Wong (playing Pride), Shu Qi (playing Mu), Fracis Ng (playing Invincible), Sam Lee (playing Fire) and a couple more. If you are familiar with Hong Kong cinema, then you will definitely recognize a good deal of the actors and actresses here.There wasn't a whole lot of martial arts going on in the movie, so don't sit down to watch "A Man Called Hero" with the hopes for seeing something in the likes of a Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie. There is a couple of martial arts scenes and some swordplay scenes, but nowhere on the scale of movies like "Hero". I, personally, could have wanted to see more martial arts and swordplay throughout the movie. But then again, it was more of a story-driven movie, not an action-driven one."A Man Called Hero" is an adequate, although fairly standard, Hong Kong action movie from the late 90's. It might be worth a watch if you enjoy Hong Kong cinema as much as I do, or if you are a fan of any of the people on the cast list.The movie was lacking something crucial to make it unique and memorable. I am sure that it will quickly fade into nothingness in my memory and just stand on the DVD shelf as a filler in the collection.

The cover of this film claims it to be 'In the spirit of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. How dare they make such a comparison?!? The film looks no more like Crouching Tiger or, for that matter, Hero (with Jet Li) than my granny looks like Pamela Anderson. 'A man called hero' is one of those cheap and cheesy Chinese martial art films that were produced by the ton, all with unconvincing action effects. Moreover, it's stuffed with flaws. The story is of a cheap emotional level, with a weak storyboard, dumb would-be comic attempts and bad acting. In short, it's your average China movie. It's trash and bad imitation, a waste of your time and money. Skip all the surplus reviews; you'll be deceived. Trust me: there's accounting of tastes. This earns no more than a 3 on a scale of 10.

I can't believe this movie only has a 5.5!! What's wrong with you people? This movie has everything. Great story, awesome fight scenes. What else could you want? The only thing I can think of is that people expected it to be more about martial arts than it was, but for me this movie is superb. My only gripe is that they never clear up what happened to Hero's daughter. I also think that Shadow should've played more of a part in the final battle, but that's very minor. I think the final battle atop the Statue of Liberty is one of the greatest fight scenes in movies. Period. Everybody who gave this such a low review should definitely give this movie one more look.

After watching The Storm Riders, I was expecting the same delights from A Man Called Hero. However, I was to be sorely disappointed as this film just looks like a rush job to capitalise on the back of The Storm Riders' success.A Man Called Hero is made by basically the same team as that behind The Storm Riders, with many of the original cast making a return (with the noteable exception of Aaron Kwok). The style of the original story, however, is really very different from Storm Riders, but the back room team failed to acknowledge this and tried to copy exactly what they did in the earlier film and in a hurried manner.What we've ended up with is a film that lacks any continuity and pace. The bulk of the film is slow and arduous to watch as you're dying to get it moving. There are gaps in the story, leaving questions in your head that are never answered. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen Hero, there is the "But what happened to...?" question at the end of the film.Where there is comfortable pace in the film, that turned out to be in the action sequences, but these itself was very lacklustre. The scenes were way too short to give any significant enjoyment, and relied too heavily on the special effects capability of the film, which in itself didn't excel itself as well as The Storm Riders. One example is the rendering of the Statue of Liberty compared to the Giant Buddha in the earlier film. The Giant Buddha had amazing attention to detail, making it look very realistic, whereas Liberty looks very artificial. And in Hero, all the action scenes rely on the SFX, as opposed to the SFX adding to the scene.In Hollywood animation studios, it usually takes many years of painstaking work to render and animate a film. I somehow feel that the production companies involved here felt more concerned about bringing in revenues quickly than to really pay attention to detail, which I feel is a big shame. But having said that, that is something that can be rectified, and a future film that features the real achievements of The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero