Labor Day weekend marks the end of Hollywood's summer movie season, which typically ends with a whimper, having used up more than its quota of bangs earlier in the season.  Zhang Yimou's Hero, starring Jet Li, took the top spot for the second week in a row with a modest total of some $11.5 million over the four-day holiday weekend.  Even in the face of weak competition, it is still quite a feat for a foreign language film to take the top spot at the box office for one week, let alone two, but one must also remember that films such as Bring It On and Signs managed consecutive box office wins in past years during the same end-of-summer period. 

Hero's total declined by 51%, bad by the standards of previous years, but not all that terrible when viewed against the second week performances of 2004's weekend box office champs.  Hero's cumulative has reached $36 million, which means it's no threat to Crouching Tiger's foreign language box office total at this time, but it does demonstrate that there is a sizable American audience for martial arts epics.  It also provides continuing support for the Comicsone adaptation (see 'Hero Comes to ComicsOne').