Jet Li's Fearless

On Tuesday, October 24, 2006, I went to see the movie Jet Li's Fearless. This was of course a movie that was shot in China, and in Mandarin, but subtitled with English.

This movie is based on a historic character, Huo Yuanjia. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a wu-shu Martial artist, but his father was unwilling to teach him. Thus, he gained his skill by reading the manual in secret. There was a match at the beginning of the movie (when Yuanjia was young) where his father lost the match, but it was only because he did not deliver a critical blow to his opponent. The opponent's family however, taunts the young Yuanjia, and he gets severely injured trying to defend the family name. It is at this moment that we see he vows to never lose again.

The rest of the movie is about Yuanjia's journey as a fighter. As he gets more victories underneath his belt, he gets more and more confident and cocky, and takes on more and more pupils, who just come for the free food and wine, but not really to learn the art of wu shu. He commits a grave act one night, when he discovers that one of his pupils were beaten by the Master Chin, and was gravely hurt. He challenges Chin to a death match on the night of his birthday, and after tearing the restaurant apart, Huo emerges victorious. However, he gets home and he discovers that his mother and daughter were slaughtered as revenge for what he did. It is also at this moment that he finds out the reason why Master Chin beat the student, it was because the student was drunk, and insulted Master Chin's wife.

Huo then wanders the country side lost, upset, disoriented, and it was when he nearly drowned that he was rescued. He was nursed back to health, and he find himself, the true meaning of wu-shu, and he understands why his father didn't deliver that fatal blow. Some of the villagers suggested that it's time to visit ancestor's graves, so Huo also sets off back to Tianjin to visit his parents' graves, as well as the grave of Master Chin, to pay his respects, and admit his error.

Without narrating the whole story, the rest of the movie is about how Huo has a new style of fighting, and is now fighting because there is too much foreign rule in China. He sought to unite the Chinese people so that they can revolt and overthrow the foreign powers and drive them from the country. So, the foreign powers staged a competition, and Huo defeats the first three of the four opponents relatively easily. He has difficulty in the last one, because of poisoned tea.

All in all, this movie was very well choreographed, it was very nice cinematographically, and the storyline was heart warming. It made me proud to watch it as a Chinese person.

On the way back, the bus driver was kind of cute, so I started up a conversation with him. I found out that he's only 25! He's my age, and he's already got a full-time job and driving a bus! Perhaps I can ride his bus more often around this time. Did I mention he was cute? ;)