
No Jet Li don't go!,

What can us viewers do to change your mine?...O well I got to say that director Ronny Yu has made the right choice of casting Jet Li as Huo Yuan Jia, after Jet portrays Huang Fei Hong in his remarkable `Once Upon A Time Trilogy.' This has once again strengthened the image of Jet Li as the Chinese hero among the Chinese around the world. This is a glorified tribute to the famous Shanghai martial arts master, Huo Yuanjia. The above subject has also been visited by Jet himself in `Fist of the Legend.'
The movie starts with Huo Yuanjia's famous tournament against the champions of the Sphere of Influence nations. We get to the Japanese challenger and then are sent into a flashback to Huo's youth. We are given the details of Huo's early life, his trials and tribulations. How he was, what he became and how he got there. This section is full of all the other parts of martial arts that have nothing to do with fighting (at this point I'm thinking fondly of Bruce's `Circle of Iron.'All the fight scenes through out the film are choreographed well and are quite exciting. 'Fearless' does carry the message not to resort violence to settle any problem, where we can see how violence did to Huo's loved ones. The showdown between Huo and other foreign fighters also promotes the idea of sparing your enemy a chance, no matter how deadly they could be. This, somehow, reflects on part of the idea and philosophy Jet Li understands and promotes from his one year Buddhism studies. As this is a semi-bio-pic, it runs into the same inherent problems in the genre; namely that you must have something invested in the person already. The person must be someone you know something or care something about. Rarely does a movie in this genre make you care about the character if you are not interested. It is much like hypnosis, if you do not believe you will not be put under.
As for this film being Jet Li's last epic, it breaks my heart but I really did enjoy it. In his own words, it's a representation of his own struggles as an actor/martial artist. It's all him (maybe a tiny bit of wire-work)! If this is what he identifies with, how he wants to end it, why should we expect him to do otherwise. I think I paid more attention to the time period, understood the dialogue, learn the lesson of respect, not everyone are vengeance driven, an eye for an eye... etc. If you are telling a story about a historical character, it has to be believable to a point, not over the top, but not everything is going to be completely accurate. Despite what others say about how boring it is... it's simply not and I'm ending this with a recommendation.
Review ID: 10000000008294880

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