Yimou Zhang’s “Hero” arrives on these shores riding a veritable tsunami of hype, as well it should.

Billed as the most expensive Chinese production to date, this striking “Crouching Tiger”-style martial arts romance features one of the gaudiest, most celebrated Asian casts ever assembled.
Imagine Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie clustered together in a big-budget Western, and you have some idea how pumped Chinese audiences must have been when the movie debuted in Asia two years ago.
Due in some degree to the patronage of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (Miramax packaged the movie with his name in the title), “Hero” is now set to make believers out of American audiences.

Set in feudal China during a time of bitter strife, “Hero” tells, in parable fashion, of a brave, nameless warrior (Asian action god Jet Li) who’s granted a rare audience with the reclusive king of Qin (Doeming Chen), a powerful warmonger striving for dominance over the rest of China.

Jet’s nameless warrior has earned this privilege by killing three notorious assassins who made repeated attempts on the king’s life, driving him into seclusion in the cold recesses of his castle.

Bidden by the king, the nameless warrior recounts his exploits in flashback. First, there’s his balletic, rain-splattered duel against the lance-wielding Sky (Donnie Yen). Later, he visits a calligraphy school in the Gobi Desert and engineers the downfall of Broken Sword (Tony Leung) and Snow (Maggie Cheung), a once-happy, tyrant-killing couple torn apart by jealously and betrayal.

With every story, the nameless warrior is allowed to move his tea service closer, until a few body lengths are all that stand between him and the beleaguered monarch.

Reunited for the first time since Kar-wai Wong’s “In the Mood for Love” (2000), Leung and Cheung demonstrate once again why they rank as one of cinema’s great on-screen couples, delivering performances that boil with desperate, destructive passion.

Zhang Ziyi (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) enhances her standing as one of Asia’s top young actresses with a deliciously tempting turn as Leung’s devoted young protégé.
More handsome still are director Zhang’s many lushly choreographed set pieces, filled with falling lotus blossoms, mind-boggling barrages of weaponry and other fanciful flourishes.

Prodded by the king to come clean with a more truthful version of his story, a la “Rashomon,” the nameless warrior provides Zhang (“Raise the Red Lantern”) with similar opportunities for reinvention: Each sequence is subtly color-coded to signify levels of truthfulness and veracity.

About the only thing that sours this immensely enjoyable martial arts fairy tale is a not-so-subtle hint of Chinese nationalism. Whether we should interpret the finale as a plea for Chinese unity or a broad justification for aggression is up for debate, but the moral is pretty clear: In order to build an empire, you’ve got to break a few skulls.