SnoopyStyle It's 1910. China is considered the sick man of Asia. In Shanghai, the foreign powers created a contest with their four champion fighters. Only martial artist Huo Yuanjia (Jet Li) rose to the challenge. He dispatches the three western champions in various disciplines. Only Tanaka from Japan is left. The movie flashes back 30 years ago in Tianjin. Yuanjia's father wants him to learn writing rather than the family wushu. Despite that, he continues to strive to make Huo Wushu the best. However family tragedy strikes and he has to reconsider his life.The fights are terrific and wall to wall. The action is great. The stunt work is exceptional. The story is actually good and compelling. Jet Li is an action hero who provides good emotional acting this time around. Director Ronny Yu brings good work to the film. The fight against the boxer is a great set piece.

Anssi Vartiainen Martial arts films tend to be rather over the top and fantastic in tone as a norm. As such it's refreshing to see one taking place in recent history and featuring actual historical people.Fearless tells the tale of Huo Yuanjia, the prodigious son of a long line of martial arts practitioners, who grows in the late 19th century China, in a nation that's buckling under the Western pressure and occupation. We see him growing from a cocky young fighter into a man that in his own way tried to preserve and protect the ideal that was and still is China.In my opinion this is Jet Li's finest film. He's everything the role needs him to be and then some. Absolutely perfect casting and one of the films where you can see that he actually has a lot of acting talent as well. Sure he can probably identify a lot with the role, but that only makes him so much better for the role. He can also pull off the more serious tone of the story in comparison to usual martial arts ware. Someone like Jackie Chan would be too comical and not arrogant enough for the role.Aside from that, it's a professionally done film. The production values are very high, the whole film looks and sounds great, the story has enough soul and depth behind it to convince and it's interesting to follow. The need to follow a historical story does make some of the plot twists seem a bit weird, because the film doesn't have enough time to give us the whole context, but that never becomes a major problem.Fearless is an excellent film to pick if you're looking for a more serious take on the martial arts genre, without giving up any of the quality or enjoyability.

thediggens Prematurely billed as Jet Li's final martial arts epic, Fearless follows the -mostly- true story of Huo Yuanjia who rose to fame defeating foreign fighters in a time where China was facing encroachment from a militant Japan and Western colonials; he also founded one of the largest Wushu organisations in the world.The story traces his early life as an arrogant, ambitious upstart fighter to an upstanding humble defender of China and the moral values inherent in Wushu. The story told is an inspiring one, of co-operation over confrontation, which unfortunately is yet to become the wide consensus. Though engaging, the beats of the story could be drawn from the book of clichés. Both the imagery and the dialogue lack any form of subtlety, particularly in the first half of the film as Jet Li's character 'matures'.The film relies on Jet Li to carry the movie, both as the only truly developed character in the film and forced to portray a spectrum of emotions. Amid tragedies that his character faces, arrogance turns to humility in what is a relatively short space of time, yet Jet Li makes it believable and real. He is of course helped along from the already mentioned weathered old storyline. The quiet exile where one 'finds themselves' is particularly trite.This is still-somewhat- a martial arts piece, and some could argue that in such a film the story is irrelevant. Though with such a strong message that would be an unfortunate conclusion here. Nevertheless, Yuen Woo-Ping is on top form for the fight scenes here, bettering most of his 'Western' work at the least. The fighting switches from flamboyance to raw brutality, and sports a fantastic variety in one-on-ones. The fights between Yuanjia and Master Chin, and against Tanaka, are particular standouts.There have been some suggestions of 'Chinese propaganda' and a one dimensional role for the 'Westerners'. Of the former charge, I'd say its patriotic and disdainful of colonialism, but neither of these are crimes. Of the latter, I was quite enjoying the portrayal, solely as the evil moustache twirlers. This spoke more to me as a hypocritical attitude from some of the 'West', and the charges are certainly exaggerated.As a note, and it may be especially relevant to the last point on one-dimensional 'villains', but this is based solely on viewings of the theatrical edition, and not the directors cut, which adds a significant 40 minutes to the length. While it's been said to be unwieldy long, the film could have done with a bit more character development, as the film is a relatively tight 1 hour 40 minutes, and Jet Li's character arc is of significant length.Certainly, the film looks great, particularly with the action scenes, and the themes are solid. The film is just disappointing for lacking any originality with its themes, and worse, originality in portraying them. It doesn't stray away from the playbook, and repeat viewings serve to make this more obvious. It takes a safe route, but by no means a bad one.

Spikeopath Fearless is directed by Ronny Yu and co-written by Chris Chow, Christine To, Wang Bin and Li Feng. It stars Jet Li, Dong Yong, Nakamura Shido II, Collin Chou and Betty Sun. Music is by Shigeru Umebayashi and cinematography by Poon Hang-sang. Film is a loose telling of the life of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese martial artist who was involved in a number of high profile fights that sought to restore pride to China before the birth of the Republic of China.An historical action drama that delivers quality fights and gorgeous photography, Fearless still isn't all that it should be. In what should be a celebration of Yuanjia's life, sprawled out on an epic canvas, we instead get Ronny Yu (The 51st State/Freddy vs Jason) showcasing his action prowess whilst rendering the human interest factors as being bland. Yes, the action is vibrant, exciting and at times spellbinding, and Li remains a watchable star in spite of his acting limitations, but the slow crawl through the second half leaves the film in desperate need of an assured story telling hand. Which sadly it doesn't get. 6/10