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Fist of Legend
Fist
of Fury was one of the definitive films of the legendary martial arts
movie star Bruce Lee and it is a relatively unknown fact that Jet Li
starred in a remake of this classic film. Jet Li has had recent success
in the US, garnering a lot of fans unfamiliar with his earlier work,
even though he has been well-known to legions of Chinese fans and
martial artist aficionados for decades. Fist of Legend's story will be
familiar to Bruce Lee fans. Chen Zhen (Jet Li), while studying in Japan,
hastily returns to China after learning that his master Huo Yuan Jia has
died. Chen returns to his old school, where he discovers that his old
master's son is now the new master and this causes conflict as it is
obvious that Chen is a superior fighter in every way. He also learns
that Huo died at the hands of a rival dojo master, Akutagawa. While
there, Chen pays respect to the old masters shrine and grabs a sign next
to it and breaks the sign in two - the sign reads "Tolerance". Chen
visits the Akutagawa's dojo and easily defeats all students and the
master, using the same martial arts technique as his dead master. This
raises suspicions that his old master may have been poisoned and
thankfully for us, and turns Chen into a one-man, all conquering revenge
machine.
Tolerance is a recurring theme in the film, as it is shot to be in
Shanghai, around 1937, during Japanese control and a lot of the film
centres around intolerance in different ways - the intolerance between
the controlling Japanese and the oppressed chinese and also between the
general chinese population and Chen's japanese love interest. This is
contrasted with many occasions of tolerance and respect towards each
other's honour systems and exudes the fact that there are honourable and
dishonourable people in all societies. In fact, the subtitles do tone
down the nationalistic and racial themes of this film, making it much
less powerful than it could be. In reference to the subtitles, with
knowledge of cantonese, I was severely disappointed in many instances.
90% of the time, the subtitles were accurate while a lot of the meaning
was cut and gilded in slang in 5% of the time. In the remaining 5% ,
the subtitles had absolutely no relevance to what the people were
actually saying - even in one instance, several lines of subtitles
appeared on the screen while no one was actually speaking. I do not
know if this was an attempt on the subtitlers to improve the movie but
it was a very poor attempt at giving the viewers an accurate portrayal
of what was being said.
The story, in itself is a worthy one, with Chen restoring the honour of
the old master Huo Yuan Jia (already a real-life folk hero in China)
amongst the backdrop of a chaotic Shanghai under control of a foreign
entity. Jet Li is excellent, especially when showing off his martial
arts and it is evident why he was already a national Chinese wushu
champion at age 17. The fights are choreographed with loads of action
and excitement and why shouldn't it be, with the person behind the
Matrix's trilogy and Kill Bill fights sequences (Woo ping Yuen) at the
helm of Fist of Iron's fights. It makes for one enjoyable film, even
for people who are not usually into martial arts films. The DVD has
limited options for the main movie, offering a Dolby 2.0 audio track
with aforementioned poor english subtitles and a commentary track. On
the second disc, there is a plethora of documentaries, deleted scenes
and trailers keeping the enthusiasts happy. This homage to Bruce Lee
and Fist of Fury is a worthy addition for the action and martial
arts movie buffs amongst us. |
