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Jet Li as Legendary Martial Arts Master in
Chopsocky Costume Drama
Huo Yuanjia (1868-1910) was the most famous, Chinese martial arts master at
the turn of the 20th Century. Still, he is probably best remembered for the spiritually-oriented
school he founded in Shanghai about seventy days before he died. For that dojo
would blossom into the Chin Woo Athletic Association, a successful franchise
which shared the guru’s closely-guarded fighting secrets with the general
public, but with an emphasis on violence as a last resort.
Fearless revisits the life and times of Huo Yuanjia, chronicling the critical
events which transformed the respected legend from a feared fighter into a peace-loving
patriot. In what has been billed as the last of his career (I’ll believe
it when I don’t see it), Jet Li stars, here, as the beloved national hero.
Unfortunately, this historical drama is unlikely to find much of an audience
outside of Asia. First of all, the stunts are nowhere near as spectacular as
your typical Bruce Lee high attrition-rate adventure, nor as innovative as that
of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, because the special effects are mostly old
school instead of state-of-the-art. Plus, the costumes, here, pale in comparison
to Crouching Tiger’s, as do the locations which lack the latter’s
spellbinding cinematographic capture. Even the basic plotline leaves a lot to
be desired, as the story unfolds as follows, in 25 words or less. Sickly, 98-pound
weakling whips himself into a lean, mean fighting machine to get even with the
bullies who teased him only to learn that revenge is not the answer, rather Chinese
unity is. This makes the Fearless more of a message movie designed for the mainland
than a karate chopsocky for consumption in the West, where a martial arts movie
needs to be about butt-kicking to generate much traction.
Good (2 stars)
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