Jet Li plays the role of traditional Chinese folk hero Hou Yuan-jia in an old school biopic that Li promised to be his last kung fu picture. So is this the best send off for a man who has done more to revive China's martial heritage in the media than Monkey and Hong Kong Phooey put together? Ben Johnson finds out.
Fearless
Distributor: Universal Pictures UK Format: Region 2 (PAL) Length: 99 min. Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 2.40:1 Audio: Mandarin, English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed) Subtitles: English, Spanish, French Extras: Scene selection, English for hearing impaired Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Year of Release: 2006; Origin: Hong Kong, United States; Studio: Beijing Film Studio, China Film
Director: Ronny Yu Yan-tai; Producer: Ronny Yu Yan-tai, Jet Li Lian-jie, Yang Bu-ting, William Kong Chi-keung; Script: Chris Chow Chun, Christine To Chi-long; Action Director: Yuen Woo-ping; Cast: Jet Li Lian-jie, Nakamura Shido, Betty Sun Li, Dong Yong, Collin Chou Siu-lung, Nathan Jones, Masato Harada.
Alternative Titles: Jet Li's Fearless
Trailer: Click below to view the trailer for Fearless
Review
Jet Li’s swan song, if you believe the hype, is perhaps the actor’s most accomplished achievement – a culmination of over two decades in the movie industry that certifies his star-power with a Hollywood-style shine. The film is an all-out biopic for starters, deliberately targeted at a Chinese New Year audience, hopelessly emotive in parts with a strong sense of national pride, and why not? Those Americans lap up this kind of thing all the time. Here, director Ronnie Yu (no stranger to the big-budget US sensibility) proves that it’s not just the Yanks who can make engaging, slightly ponderous, all-encompassing vanity fests. Jet Li delivers a tour-de-force as real-life Chinese kung fu supremo Hou Yuan-jia. To be honest, he could be playing anybody: Li’s traditional robe-wearing mould is the persona that suits him best and he undoubtedly wears it well. Historically, many may argue that Hou’s life wasn’t quite so colourful, but then again I don’t recall America winning the Falklands War, or putting Stallone in goal for England, or consolidating the Universe, so two can play at that game.
Hou has already had a rich involvement in HK cinema for a while as a forerunner in a tri-party alliance with other National folk-heroes Wong Fei-hung and Fong Sai-yuk (both already famously portrayed on-screen by, you guessed it, Jet Li). Hou is Bruce Lee’s sifu who is poisoned by the Japanese at the start of 1972’s Fist of Fury – then Hou makes a return in the film’s 1995 re-make, Fist of Legend (the Bruce Lee role played by, flipping heck, Jet Li). A film which pre-dates Fearless in its content and character is 1980’s Legend of a Fighter, directed by Yuen Woo-ping (who returns to choreograph this film), which outlines Hou’s story from rags to riches in not such a self-absorbed way. So, you could argue that with Fearless, Jet Li has significantly solidified his status as China’s most dignified ambassador, having played all of the country’s most prestigious role-models on film: Huo Yuan-jia, Wong Fei-hung, Fong Sai-yuk, and, of course, Bruce Lee.
In doing so, these real-life heroes of great strength and valour have, some may argue adversely, embodied the presence and persona of the great man playing them – with the obvious exception of Lee. Nobody does nobility, pride and virtue quite like Jet Li, and his Hou Yuan-jia is no different. But it takes a while for Hou to learn the lessons brought by maturity, which is why the first hour of this opus is a complete riot. Hou is impulsive and reckless, but still an upstanding and well-regarded family man. He likes to drink and fight, sometimes in that order, and battles viciously to proclaim his status as the best fighter in his slightly humdrum, turn-of-the-century, provincial town.
This is partly down to a rather tame father figure that learnt the lessons of life and favoured the art of combat more than the art of winning. Hou, therefore, grows up with a chip on his shoulder, and pummels adversaries into broken wrecks of flesh and bone. All quite fulfilling until his quest to topple the one remaining fat cat in town leaves Hou in a self-inflicted mess of great redemption. He kills his opponent flat out with a right hook so powerful it punctures his heart (this is after a serious drubbing of ornate woodwork and wine jugs). The Big Boss’s students take great offence to their Master’s death and decide to kill Hou’s mother and daughter. Hou, understandably, goes a bit scatty, wonders off, and awaits a slow and pitiful death.
When he comes to, a blind Betty Sun and her rural community of humble tea-growers nurse him lovingly back to health. His recuperation and solitude evokes even the most cliched of Hollywood devices, and as lovely as Ronny Yu makes his Chinese countryside look, there’s an impending feeling that the rest of the film might fall foul of this sensitivity, and for the most part it does. After a few years of growing tea, he returns home around 1907 to find himself in a growing metropolis of western influence that doesn’t recognise his former standing. He opens up the Jing Wu School for health and learning with an old friend and gradually wins back the respect of his people, all predictably enough.
The final poke of patriotism arrives in a Western-style ringside brawl with gweilo adversaries (something that the real Hou was noted for), and a finale involving a Japanese fighter and a team of money-grabbing, match-fixing aristocrats who throw the match by poisoning the star player. Hou spews black blood as his Karate-kicking opponent slogs at his guts. He dies a hero while his last thoughts are of Betty Sun in a field of tea, which is all well and good for the romantics, but you’ll prefer to remember Jet Li as the hard-hitting hero of the film’s opening hour. Still, if this proves to be his ultimate swan song, there’s really no better way to clarify an image that is much more about the morality of the Chinese people than that of the character he is portraying.
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By: Andrew Arcus (Registered IP 144.139.223.108) on 31-03-2008 13:10
What a great movie. Right up there with "Fist Of Legend' which has been my favourite movie for a long time. Movies like this just make you want to train harder and be a better person.
Jet Li plays the role of traditional 
Jet Li’s swan song, if you believe the hype, is perhaps the actor’s most accomplished achievement – a culmination of over two decades in the movie industry that certifies his star-power with a Hollywood-style shine. The film is an all-out biopic for starters, deliberately targeted at a Chinese New Year audience, hopelessly emotive in parts with a strong sense of national pride, and why not? Those Americans lap up this kind of thing all the time. Here, director Ronnie Yu (no stranger to the big-budget US sensibility) proves that it’s not just the Yanks who can make engaging, slightly ponderous, all-encompassing vanity fests. Jet Li delivers a tour-de-force as real-life Chinese kung fu supremo Hou Yuan-jia. To be honest, he could be playing anybody: Li’s traditional robe-wearing mould is the persona that suits him best and he undoubtedly wears it well. Historically, many may argue that Hou’s life wasn’t quite so colourful, but then again I don’t recall America winning the Falklands War, or putting Stallone in goal for England, or consolidating the Universe, so two can play at that game. 
When he comes to, a blind Betty Sun and her rural community of humble tea-growers nurse him lovingly back to health. His recuperation and solitude evokes even the most cliched of Hollywood devices, and as lovely as Ronny Yu makes his Chinese countryside look, there’s an impending feeling that the rest of the film might fall foul of this sensitivity, and for the most part it does. After a few years of growing tea, he returns home around 1907 to find himself in a growing metropolis of western influence that doesn’t recognise his former standing. He opens up the Jing Wu School for health and learning with an old friend and gradually wins back the respect of his people, all predictably enough. 
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By: Andrew Arcus (Registered IP 144.139.223.108) on 31-03-2008 13:10
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