Fearless

Just arrived back from the cinema after watching Jet Li’s last martial art movie. It is based on the true story of a fighter that never gave up. As a child Jet’s character, Chinese Martial Arts Master Huo Yuanjia (1869-1910), was forbidden by his father (another fighter) to study martial arts, so he trained himself from the age of ten after stealing his father’s training manual.

The story then jumps forward several years where Huo Yuanjia has a daughter, and he is a champion fighter, who has never lost a fight since he was ten. His character is someone most of us can relate with, which is a change from most of his other parts.

I can see how this movie is his last martial art film, there’s no way he could deliver such a wonderful performance again. The fight scenes were amazing, right from the get-go. Just amazing.

The movie is in Chinese, so we get to speed read the subtitles, which were basic at most. Often I could only get half the sentence read before it changed. And other times the sentence would stay for a hell of a long time that I got to read it several times.
The movie is based on a true story of Huo Yuanjia who started Jing Wu Men, a martial arts school in Shanghai.

Apparently, a lot has been cut from this movie so I guess I will be buying the DVD when it comes available. I wouldn’t rate this movie as one of the best ever (or even the greatest of this season) but it is a very good, action packed, fun filled, time killing movie.

The two best fight scenes were:

1) the restaurant fight where Huo kills Master Chin (Qin)

2) the last battle against the Japanese master Tanaka.

“Fate made him a warrior, courage made him a hero“

{From Wikipedia: The film was originally 150 minutes long, but to fit market demand, it was cut to 105 minutes, and scenes by Michelle Yeoh and a fight between Jet Li and a Thai boxer, portrayed by Somluck Kamsing, were removed. A special release of the film in Thailand in March 2006 reinserted the scenes with Somluck (but not Michelle Yeoh), making it only slightly longer than 105 minutes.}

Wikipedia has a full explination of the story and it is chockablock with soilers, but also includes extra info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearless_(2006_film)