How others will see it. There are Samurai and Kung Fu films from the Far East. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ushered in a western-friendly genre of choreographed physics-defying sword battles, profound philosophies, superior cinematography, and other such high quality production values. And, the pretty girls can fight too, which is important since there's no need to insult half of your potential audience.
Lots of people eat films like this up, and although the fight scenes still seem contrived, the story is there, and the basics of it make sense. Best of all, it looks good, which is important since if a film has beauty, it has potential.
How I felt about it. This is not really a movie about a would-be hero/assassin and the king, who might be wise uniter, and not a despot with an unduly large and weirdly single-minded army. Hero is really about the messed-up heads of Broken Sword and Flying Snow. Complicating matters is the constant presence of comely Moon (Ziyi Zhang), who is both cuter and clearly younger than Flying Snow, and thus presumably a temptation to her master, Broken Sword.
Flying Snow (the name Hard Drizzle was apparently already taken) is determined to see the king killed. Broken Sword lives up to his name, however, and isn't sure. Will his doubt infect the nameless one?
The king's two assets are his perceptive wisdom, and his huge monolithic army, which is well trained and intensely loyal.
The master swordsmen, which includes sad-faced beauty Flying Snow, are similar to Samurai, except they work for an ideal, rather than for hire. Their western counterpart is the comic book superhero. They're not from Krypton, and haven't been bitten by a radioactive spider. However, they have willpower, finely honed skill, and a force-like ability to manipulate their environment to aid their battles. They work for good rather than evil, at least as they see it.
Although Hero is beautiful, in the end it all seems staged. These people need less dedication and sacrifice, and more laughs. Didn't they have comedy clubs in ancient China?