Fearless

Jet Li's last wushu film

On release, Jet Li presented Fearless as his last martial arts film in the traditional sense, the kind where wushu carries a message. He plays Huo Yuanjia, a real figure born in 1868, a practitioner of mizongyi, a northern kung fu style, and founder in 1910 of the Jingwu association in Shanghai, the first Chinese school open to all. The script heavily fictionalises his life: the slaughtered family, the village retreat and the final tournament are invented or rearranged. But the ending draws on an established fact, Huo's death shortly after his bouts against foreigners, which legend attributes to poisoning.

Yuen Woo-ping and four fighting styles

The fights are staged by Yuen Woo-ping, in his seventh collaboration with Jet Li, and they are the reason to watch. The final tournament pits Huo against four opponents with different styles: a British boxer, a Belgian spearman, a Spanish fencer and above all the Japanese master Anno Tanaka, played by kabuki actor Nakamura Shidō, in a duel with sword and spear and then bare hands. Australian giant Nathan Jones, a former strongman, plays the wrestler Hercules O'Brien; Jones broke several of a stuntman's ribs during filming. Thai boxer Somluck Kamsing, Olympic boxing champion in 1996, appears in a longer cut. The early fights on a lei tai, the raised platform of Chinese tournaments, use little wirework and show readable combinations of punches and sweeps.

What a practitioner will recognise

Jet Li's forms, trained in competition wushu since childhood, remain the benchmark of the genre: low stances, chained punches, jumping kicks, spear and three-section staff work. The film sets that wushu against the straight lines of boxing and Western wrestling, and the conversation between Huo and Tanaka about tea and respect for the opponent sums up the film's moral: martial arts are there to conquer yourself.

Reception

Released in Hong Kong on 26 January 2006 and in the United States on 22 September, the film grossed about 68 million dollars worldwide, including 24.6 million in the US. Critics praised the fights and Jet Li's seriousness while finding the script melodramatic. A 2h21 director's cut with extra tournament fights was released on home video. Twenty years on, the South China Morning Post ranks it among the classics of Hong Kong martial arts cinema.