RSS
Home
Jet Li Week: Fist of Legend
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
It's fine because fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping and leading man Jet go nuts with the kungfu in this one. No fancy cueball tricks (see the Kiss of the Dragon review) or gory self-impalements (Black Mask review), just all around fantastic fighting.
If you haven't seen Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury (not to be confused with the U.S. Fist of Fury, which is really The Big Boss, but the U.S. dubbed Chinese Connection, which is really Fist of Fury...get it?), then here's a quick take Legend's spin: Li is Chen Zen, a student of Jing Wu, a dojo in China. He's studying abroad in Japan during a time of war between the two countries. When Chen finds out his master has been killed by a far inferior Japanese master in a fight, he races back to Shanghai to investigate. What follows is Li using his detective skills (I.E. beating the ever-loving sh*t out of everyone) to find out if his master was poisoned and, if so, by whom, and it all turns into a faceoff between Jing Wu and a local Japanese dojo, full of all kinds of intolerance, just like Connection. It's a decent story and it holds up, but just like most Li flicks, it's not the strongpoint, and that couldn't be more true here.
There was a point made in the Kiss of the Dragon review about how great it was that Li took on a room full of people all at once. He does it here too...twice, two different groups of people, and it's flawless. If you're a fan of the Matrix films, or even if you aren't and accidently saw the trilogy more than once, you'll definitely see some moves (even some shots) that were "borrowed" from the Wachowski Brothers. Since that trilogy was so great, it's hard to admit, but the Matrix films, the concepts, the kungfu, all of it - it was just a hybrid of a number of different films, of Fist of Legend was a huge reference point for them. Kinda cool to see the source...
There's also a fight in which Jet and a Japanese Master square off...blindfolded! With the exception of the film's last fight, this probably took ages to perfect and is really a showcase for the discipline and dedication of Li to the art. He had to learn the fight, and then practice it until he could do it with his eyes closed. Granted it is possible the blindfold's cloth was a bit seethrough, but even still, try doing ANYTHING with the minimal vision he was provided with, let alone participate in a choreographed kungfu fight.
Most noteably, though, is the fight at the end of the film between Jet and Billy Chow, which lasts almost ten minutes long, is a beautiful finish to Legend, which is widely and universally considered to be Li's best work. This fight must've taken weeks to film, as the two go all out in multiple stages of fighting. Li finishes it off with his belt - literally, he takes off his belt and finishes the fight with it, masterfully.
This is a short review simply because there's not much more to say about it: It's Jet Li's best film (as well as Yuen Wo Ping's), and if you like his work and you like kungfu, which are kind of the same thing anyway, then you'd be crazy to miss this.
Saving the best for last, we'll round out Jet Li week with the Chinese Connection re-do, Fist of Legend. To be fair, on the back of Legend's cover, it tells us that it's an homage to Bruce Lee's classic, but it's a fancy way of telling us that it's a remake, and make no remake mistake, that's what it is. And that's perfectly fine.
Related Articles:
Comments
