Will Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi blaze a trail of glory for this year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

_{A lot is riding on the back of Hero, the much anticipated epic that boasts a star-studded line-up and breathtaking cinematography. Chinese national pride for one. And oh, that US$30 million investment by Miramax Studios.}

8 Days, Jan 2003, No. 640

Diana Ong, direct from Beijing

Here's the news: Hero is tipped to be this year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. No wait. Everybody knew that, even before Ang Lee picked up the Best Foreign Film Oscar. Here's the news instead: while everyone is eagerly anticipating a second Oriental triumph, the man responsible for Hero is perplexingly blasé.

Pen-wielding journalists, jetted into Beijing from Indonesia to Israel, predictably assail director Zhang Yimou with The Question: Will Hero win an Oscar?

He counteracts swiftly with a well-practised defence stance, "It was extraordinary for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to get so many nominations and awards... miracles won't repeat themselves."

But Zhang Yimou's just playing it safe because there is no doubt that the director, who made his mark with arthouse successes like Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou, has pulled out all the stops for his first wuxia film.

Sartorial guru Emi Wada, who won an Academy Award for the fineries in Akira Kurosawa's Ran, makes her threads count in this movie. Acclaimed action director Tony Ching Siu Tung (Shaolin Soccer and A Chinese Ghost Story III) takes you through the wushu paces. Tan Dun, yes, the very same Oscar-winning composer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon strums his music mastery while Chris Doyle of In the Mood for Love fame, lens his genius to the cinematography. The result is a beautiful love story set in the breathtaking panorama of China's lush landscapes from Dunhuang to Jiuzhaigou. Wind-whipped dunes. Dancing autumn leaves. An emerald lake is an oasis of calm even as two duelling figures dip on the surface, like a pair of fleet and light dragonflies in the first stirring of spring.

Add to that a director's dream cast of Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheng, Zhang Ziyi and you have an almost-assured winner.

Hero's premise is very simple: circa 220BC, three top assassins - Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Sky (Donnie Yen) have been sent to stop Emperor Qin (Chen Daomoing) from uniting China. When a lowly county sheriff, Nameless (Jet Li), turns up bearing their weapons and an extraordinary tale of their defeat, he is duly rewarded with taels of gold and an audience with the Emperor.

The film trusses up three perspectives of the story, stylised in four colours. Red, to symbolise passion and revenge, blue conjuring romance and tenderness, white to evoke enlightenment and forgiveness, and green depicting youth and valour. The Qin kingdom is awash in bleak black, its official hue as depicted in history tomes.

Care has been taken to perfect detail after painstaking detail. To film the scarlet-soaked balletic swordplay between love rivals Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi (Broken Sword's devoted servant) in an ancient oak grove in Inner Mongolia, Zhang Yimou went as far as to implement a leaf classification system. "Special-class leaves were blown in the actresses' faces, first-class leaves in front of them and third class were scattered on the ground." Between takes, the crew even had to pick up leaves and clean them one by one.

If that doesn't impress, consider the fearsome whirr of Qin arrows hurling through the air (the state of Qin is famed for excellence in archery). That was composed by mixing over 50 different sounds ranging from zooming planes to pig squeals.

Indeed, Zhang Yimou's not known as a perfectionist for nothing. But then, a lot hangs in the balance. He will not admit to high hopes, but everything screams "Oscar contender" (the film has been accepted in the Best Foreign Film category after a week-long debut Shenzhen run). From Hero's top-notch cast and the huge budget pumped in by Miramax (at US$30 million, it's twice that of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's) to the banners that hang on the walls during the press conference in Beijing's People's Hall. They proclaim in Chinese, "Support Hero, China's bid for the Academy Awards." Meanwhile, 200 imposing Qin sentinels - replete with armour and spears - face off with 500 journalists from all over the globe. The grandiloquent setting is a stark contrast to the stars' seemingly careless shrugs of "We've done our best. Getting awards is not important."

Oscar or not, it's best that, for now at least, we take the cue from the cast. As veteran actor Chen Daoming aka Emperor Qin, sagely puts it, it's only a movie, folks.

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