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Jet Li |
Jet's kung fu flight of fancy
FEARLESS
Directed by Ronny Yu
Certificate 15
Jet Li is the real deal. He spent the 1970s winning medals in the kung fu martial art called wushu, and it means you can still sit back and take a large gulp when you see him prancing across the screen, knocking out baddies left, right and centre.
And what makes him stand out from other kung fu fighters is he can act a little too – although in Fearless, he requires the bare minimum of thespian qualities.
The story is simple, straightforward and very soppy – and it is only saved by its high class production values.
The story, littered with some home-spun homilies about power and responsibility, and not using your incredible strength to bully those weaker than you, is predictable.
Jet Li (pictured) plays the master kung-fu man Huo Yuanjia, a top class martial artist with a large chip on his shoulder. We discover Huo’s dad was beaten in a duel – and that made the youngster vow never to suffer the same fate. It turns him into a sadist, something he is warned about by his friend Jinsun (Dong Yong).
Unsurprisingly, Jinsun is proved right when Huo, at the height of his powers as a kung fu master extraordinaire, murders a rival in a drunken brawl. This prompts a revenge killing of family members and our hero begins a new journey of soul searching.
Grief stricken, he heads to the hills to find himself – and ends up meeting the gorgeous blind girl Moon (Betty Sun) and her mother in a village where the most exciting thing is the rice harvest. They eventually persuade Huo to see that his powers have given him a chance to do good.
Jet Li is a massive star in China and has managed to cross over to Hollywood by making the same types of films over and over again. However, he said this will be the last martial arts style film he makes: if this is true, we’ll see if he really has some strengths as an actor instead of just as a super athlete. |
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