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One cannot deny that I’m a big Jet Li fan. Oddly, and mistakenly, I was reluctant to watch Huo Yuan Jia since I had the impression he’d made an adoration to a man who was his own hero, who’d founded the Wushu school of martial arts a century ago. Indeed, before becoming an actor, Li five times won the Chinese Wushu championship although modern Wushu is a creation of the country’s Communist leadership and not the same style practiced by the historical Huo Yuan Jia.
Jet Li’s Fearless, the English title, is a bit idealized from the man’s real life. Not just to make a nice dramatic 100 minute package but to create a more heroic character; not that it matters to me, not being Chinese all I care about is an entertaining film. It does apparently present the man’s true position on the meaning of martial arts: self-improvement and self-development, with combat against others useful only as a means of testing one’s progress.
The movie can be divided into three parts: Huo’s childhood and early adult years, his years in the wilderness absorbing some tough lessons and finally, the emergence of a national champion at a time when Westerners and the Japanese treated China like a toy chest. At first Li’s character is arrogant, his ambition only to defeat every other fighter in his home city of Tianjin, but on attaining this goal its revealed as shallow and empty and his conceit leads to the death of his mother and daughter.
Destroyed, he’s nearly killed after running away from the shame but saved on the point of drowning by the crew of a fishing boat from a simple village. A lovely young blind woman and her grandmother take him in, restoring his health and teaching her their traditional wisdom. After several years working his way to an integrated, mature mental state, he returns to Tianjin only to find that foreigners have arrived in his absence and reduced his proud friends and neighbors to servants.
With his hard-earned insight Huo travels to Shanghai to take on a massive boxer. This O’Brien has defeated every Chinese fighter who gets in the ring with him and mocked the entire nation as weak, providing the final spark in Huo’s thinking. Not only does he defeat the boxer, easily, but does so with such graciousness that his opponent is able to push through his rage to acknowledge defeat.
Huo then founds the Jingwu Sports Federation (Jing Wu Men) based on the idea that only through unity will China pull free of foreign dominion. The foreigners don’t cotton so quickly to this thinking and challenge him to fight a champion from each of their four nations, a British boxer, a German lancer, a Spanish fencer, and a Japanese martial artist. Huo wins but also loses.
Li has the meat of the action, but also turning in strong performances are Betty Sun as the blind woman, Shido Nakamura as his Japanese opponent in his final match, Yong Dong as his lifelong friend and partner; the youngster who play’s Huo as a child isn’t listed in the IMDB or official website credits but was also terrific.
The movie was directed by Ronny Yu, one of Hong Kong’s most highly regarded filmmakers, and the action sequences were choreographed by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping.
recommended
