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EUR FILM REVIEW: Fearless (Huo Yuanjia)
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)
Rated PG-13 for martial arts action.
In Japanese, Mandarin and English with subtitles.
Running time: 103 minutes
Studi Focus Features
AFRICAN VOICES CINEMA SERIES debuts
at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi. The
American Film Institute (AFI) debuts African
Voices Cinema Series at this year's AFI
FEST, November 1-12, 2006. African
Voices provides an international platform
for African directors, writers, and producers,
who communicate the culture, politics,
and the vision of a people through film.
Read More at: www.AFIFEST.com
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