Budding martial artist, Chen Zen (Jet Li) returns to Shanghai after hearing the news that his teacher died. His teacher died in a challenge match against a Japanese Solider, Akutagawa Ryuichi. After returning to the Jing Wu School (which was ran by his teacher) and finding out the whole story from Hou (Chin Siu-Ho), Chen goes to challenge Akutagawa himself.
Upon his arrival at the Japanese School, Chen starts brawling with the students training after they refuse him to see Akutagawa. After single handedly defeating the students, Chen is confronted by Akutagawa and Chen soon defeats him easily. Chen couldn’t believe that his Master would have lost to someone obviously weaker than him, Chen questions that he could have been poisoned.
Chen digs up the body of his master has a doctor perform an autopsy on him. The tests soon show that his master was poisoned. Now Chen must find out who poisoned his master and why…
Chen is also dating a women in this film, to make things worse she is Japanese and Chens family at Jing Wu aren’t happy to see her. His girlfriend, Mitsuko Yamada (Shinobu Nakayama) is the niece of Funakochi Fumio (Yasuaki Kurata). Funakochi is friends with the twisted general Fujita, although he highly against the believes of the general.
Now to the facts, most of you should know this is a remake of Lo Wei’s Fist Of Fury, which starred the fighting legend, Bruce Lee. This time Jet Li has taken the role from Bruce. So who’s better? Bruce or Jet? for some reason I felt that Jet Li’s character had more impact although Bruce created ‘Chen Zen’. Plus adding Yaksuaki Kurata to the movie was a great idea, I really enjoyed his performance, his battle with Jet was fabulous and memorably.
The Action was very hard hitting making use of one feature which isn’t used very often, dislocation. In Jets opening scenes he is fighting off a group of unruly Japanese students. He manages to dislocate, ankles, jaws, shoulders, arms etc. This is very new, I still haven’t seen such films where this is used regularly. Now the battles are great, Jet Li vs. Chin Siu Ho, Jet Li vs. Yaksuaki Kurata & Jet Li vs. Billy Chow!!
Final thoughts. A ground breaking Jet Li flick, although Miramax have been known to for changes the film, with extensive change in the dialogue, the music and I think five minutes have been cut out too. So all I want to see now is the actual Hong Kong Release of Fist of Legend!!!
