2 reviews

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Glenn Watson June 11, 2006

Fearless is the latest – and last – kung fu film from martial arts maestro Jet Li. Never quite as popular as Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee, Li has always struggled to make an impact in the west. The likes of The One, Cradle 2 the Grave and Kiss of the Dragon were so poorly edited or CGI’d that you and I could have starred in them. Only last year’s Scotland-set Unleashed showed what Jet can do – realizing the film-stealer potential he showed as Mel Gibson’s nemesis in Lethal Weapon 4. But before then, Li was a megastar in China, hero of the cult-classic Once Upon a Time in China series and a host of belting fight-fests. Fearless is Li’s swansong, bowing-out of the pigtailed, traditional kung fu movie genre but it makes an awkward transition to western screens.

Li plays real-life kung fu legend HuoYuanjia. Founder in 1910 of the Jingwu Sports Federation, Huo became the nation’s pride when he trounced a series of gung-ho western opponents in a sporting showdown in Shanghai. But Huo was no angel – and Fearless charts the downs and ups of a hothead young fighter turned national hero. Little kid Huo wants to learn fighting from his kung fu teacher dad but is deemed too sickly. Beaten by bullies, he learns in private and becomes an accomplished but wayward fighter with followers of his own. But when his pride causes tragedy, it’s help from an unlikely source, a blind girl and her grandmother, which puts the heart into the man.

With choreography from the ubiquitous Yuen Woo Ping (The Matrix Trilogy, Kill Bill 1 & 2) there are plenty of fights, imaginatively staged. Appropriately for a biopic of a martial arts pro, the camera zooms in on lots of nifty kicks, grabs and punches, spicing-up proceedings. But director Ronny Yu (‘famous’ here for franchise-revivers Bride of Chucky and Freddy vs. Jason) lets Woo Ping think he’s still making The Matrix; consequently, Jet’s fights are jazzed up with completely unnecessary and obvious computer effects. With one genuine martial arts champion (Li) portraying another - why do that? Guffaws apart, it undermines the essential wow factor. The Forrest Gump style homilies, too, are jarring. But the film is a visual treat, wonderfully shot.

No classic, Fearless displays Li more as an actor than a supreme fighter. It’s Collin Chou (Seraph from Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions) who physically impresses in a brief and blistering fight. Li’s at his eye-popping best in the use of weapons – sword, staff and nunchuk – something we don’t see in his western outings. But his opponents are mostly wooden. Worse, they gurn and growl - cartoon-style - in cack-handed contrast to the civilized tea-drinkers of the east.

Fearless is choppy, cut down from a longer print - rough and ready rather than realistic. Visually impressive, and with a high fight-quotient, it entertains but short-changes in the drama department. For an exciting, credible biopic of another martial arts legend, see Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story instead.

Billed as Jet Li’s last martial arts film, “Fearless” reflects Li’s own screen career: brilliant physical skills often over-treated by production techniques (wires, CGI) and his limited acting ability not helped by heavy-handed characterization and script.

Yet the core effect is entertaining enough, even if the audience is made conscious throughout that entertainment is only the vehicle, not the end, of a didactic iteration of the life of arrogant kung fu supremo turned life-style role-model, Huo Yuan Jia.

Huo died in 1910 and the period setting of the film, together its fortissimo moral messages, give Western audiences a strangely Victorian sensation. However, there is nothing sentimental about the damage done by the fighting or its consequences: competition, ambition, rejection, treachery and revenge generate a brisk procession of blood and broken bones, cut throats and that strange internal damage which comes from the force of “chi” in the hands of a kung fu master.

The pastoral interlude where Huo observes his own attitude – his personal race to plant rice faster than anyone else results in his placid rescuer Moon doing the work again – takes place in an idyll of lush green terraces and happy peasants growing their food undisturbed by the influence of traffic with the West or the physical posturing of kung fu students whose chosen subject is free-loading.

The supporting roles are performed well enough (it is not Moon’s fault that her lines are written in platitude) and Li is pitted – no, pits himself – against some daunting fighters. Somehow Huo’s desire to halt the Chinese habit of being pushed around by Westerner and Japanese “visitors” seems reason enough to continue fighting, even if its message of resistance by combat is, finally, rather in opposition to his reformed character speaking its last message of peace.

Vision Expressed 2 Jul 2006