Standing up to imperialism has often been a theme in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and given Hong Kong’s history, it’s easy to see why. Hong Kong is a city that has long struggled with its own identity. For a time, it was not part of China, and the city’s natives certainly weren’t considered British either. China is a nation that spent an incredibly long stretch of history being governed by foreign powers, it’s ironic that now they hold the majority of our nation’s debt. But Hong Kong was a city that spent almost the entire twentieth century as a British colony, and as the specter of Communist Chinese takeover loomed in the nineties, both Hong Kong’s identity and future seemed uncertain.
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It was out of this cultural context that Tsui Hark’s classic martial arts epic Once Upon a Time China was released, an action-packed tale of the culture clash between east and west in 19th century Hong Kong. While the film’s protagonist, Dr. Wong Fei-hung, is a folk hero that has been portrayed in countless films, Jet Li’s version of the character helped reinvigorate Hong Kong kung-fu movies and would come to be his definitive role as an actor. Li’s take on Wong redefined the role of the intellectual warrior who must defend his countrymen against foreign tyranny. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, which is a continuation of a TV series called Fist of Fury, is the latest in this tradition.
The TV show Fist of Fury was a re-working of the famous Fist of Fury film starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Let me tell you, knowing the story so far going into Legend of the Fist helps, otherwise it’s a confusing narrative to say the least. After avenging his slain teacher’s death at the hands of the Japanese, Chen Zhen (Donnie Yen) is presumed dead. Chen travels to Europe to join his countrymen to fight in the European theatre of World War I (the film informs us of China’s ignored-yet-important role in said conflict). After the war is over, he returns to Shanghai under the alias of a fallen comrade, finding the city torn between the occupying British and Japanese forces. Joining an underground rebel movement, an incognito Chen becomes the manager of a posh nightclub for foreigners dubbed, homage ahoy, Casablanca. Like in the Bogart/Bergman classic, the club is a place where powerful political enemies often find themselves tables away from each other, giving Chen a valuable position that is not only close to his enemies, but will also help him avoid suspicion. Chen takes on the invaders in public by disguising himself as a masked hero, who looks an awful lot like Kato from The Green Hornet (no doubt another tribute to Bruce Lee). Using his new superhero identity, Chen uses it to save the political enemies of the murderous Japanese forces, in an effort to rid Shanghai of their foreign influence.
If that paragraph above makes the plot to this movie sound simple in any way, I assure you it is not. Legend of the Fist honestly feels like a season of a television show cut down into a feature film. Characters are casually introduced and killed, slapdash subplots come and go, and none of it feels like it has any consequence. On top of that, much of Chen Zhen’s kung-fu superheroics are given the montage treatment, as though a ton of action scenes were consolidated into a shotgun blast of various explosions and beatdowns. These bite-sized bits that are neither exciting, nor satisfying. The movie’s opening sequence, which takes place on a World War I battlefield, involves Chen fighting through enemy territory with dual bayonets in an effort to kill as many German troops as possible in the most insanely over-the-top manner imaginable, and it’s damn good fun. The scene where he first attacks the Japanese assassins in his Kato costume is also excellent, and promises a fun, pulpy adventure for our hero. But the movie loses steam shortly afterward, the story gets convoluted, it lacks focus, and eventually it becomes hard to care about anything that is happening.
The film’s director, Andrew Lau, is best known for co-directing the excellent Infernal Affairs films with Alan Mak, which went on to inspire the Oscar-winning Martin Scorsese remake, The Departed. The Infernal Affairs movies were gritty (save for the occasional cantopop-laden sequence), but Legend of the Fist has a classical visual extravagance to it. The pre-World War II Shanghai setting recalls the opening action scene in Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Combine that with the pulp superhero vibe, and you have what should be a unique martial arts concoction. But Lau isn’t content to let his jazzy setting and extravagant production design do the work for him, and this is his undoing. Flashy editing and modern music ruin the sense of time and place, it’s an approach that’s akin to serving a fine cut of steak with a side of ketchup.
Legend of the Fist is one I hoped to love, Donnie Yen is one of the greatest leading men in Hong Kong martial arts movies right now, his work in movies like Kill Zone and Ip Man are high above the rest of the city’s recent crop of films, and I can find no fault with his brutal action choreography in this film. The cinematic tradition Legend of the Fist draws from, from Bruce Lee to Tsui Hark, is a rich one. But it can’t be discussed in the same breath as films like Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China, or Ronny Yu’s magnificent Fearless (which deals with Chen Zhen’s late master, another legendary Chinese hero). In fact, I would recommend watching those instead, if you haven’t seen them already. For great movies featuring the Chen Zhen character, go snag Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, or the remake starring Jet Li, Fist of Legend. They bring the goods in a manner that this film fails to.
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