Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
A strange mix of kung fu, superhero, spy and war genres in one film, I had been extremely excited about this movie, and as good as it was, I have to say I was quite disappointed.
Chen Zhen is a character very familiar to kung fu movie fans. He was portrayed by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury (a.k.a. The Chinese Connection) and by Jet Li in Fist of Legend.
Donnie Yen is the kung fu action star of the moment and here he is portraying Zhen as a masked crusader in the Japanese-ruled China of World War II. Yen as Zhen, in a film by Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs), co-starring Anthony Wong, sounds like an absolute dream come true. It’s not.
It is an enjoyable action flick, but the fight scenes pale in comparison to the aforementioned Chen Zhen movies or Yen’s work in films like Ip Man and Ip Man 2.
All Chen Zhen films I’ve seen feature the protagonist fighting off a huge number of Japanese assailants in a karate dojo – as he did in Ip Man – and this film’s version of that scene is telegraphed very early on in the script. But when it finally arrives, it’s fairly anti-climatic.
Yen himself choreographed the fights and for some reason decided to create most of the action with editing and CGI, rather than his own highly impressive skills, which is a shame.
Still, the action at times is very impressive. The opening scene is set in World War I and has Chen Zhen battling German soldiers. He’s a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, impossible to be hit by enemy fire no matter how many different enemies are shooting at him, often from close range. He flips and jumps about, brutally dispatching scores of German’s with his superhero skills. It’s pretty cool.
And despite how they compare to other Donnie Yen and Chen Zhen films, the action scenes are still pretty amazing compared to your standard Hollywood fare.
A bog-standard Hollywood action flick would never stoop as low as this film does in another respect, however.
A good many Chinese and Hong Kong films are set in World War II and portray the Japanese as cruel, honourless, cowardly villains. But Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen takes it to a disturbing level, pushing anti-Japanese sentiment in an irresponsible, potentially dangerous way.
How far does it go? Well the worst section is a montage of Japanese soldiers raping (implied only, thankfully), torturing and carrying out mass executions of Chinese victims, edited into Chinese protesters yelling slogans at the film’s audience like: “Remember the humiliation of our country!” – all intercut with a Japanese flag burning.
Considering the real-world strained relationship between the two nations, and the fact that these explicit anti-Japanese messages are inserted callously into this film with its cartoon-like characters and masked crusaders, I was both surprised and disappointed.
The French are also referred to as cowardly bullies who abused Chinese workers in World War I, where the German enemies were unable to shoot straight, and the British colonists in China are also portrayed as oafish oppressors.
Despite the shocking political tone and at times disappointing action, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen still manages to delight with a few fun scenes and nods to Bruce Lee, even if they are almost lost in a plodding, clichéd storyline designed solely to feed off Chinese nationalism.
It just scrapes by with two and a half stars.
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
:: Director: Andrew Lau
:: Starring: Donnie Yen, Qi Shu, Anthony Wong, Yasuaki Kurata, Shawn Yue
:: Running Time: 105 mins
:: Rating: R16 - contains violence
:: Release Date: September 23, 2010
:: Trailer: Watch here
