(Jet Li's) Fearless (2006)

Martial Arts superstar Jet Li has announced that this will be his last action film and, if that is correct, it is a strong final statement.  However he is still only 44 years old (and good old Jackie is still going) and has lost little of his remarkable grace and fighting ability.  So it may well be like Sinatra's many farewell tours with further movies to come which I for one would welcome.  Here he plays a real life fighter named Huo Yuan Jia at the turn of the last century.  Having seen his father defeated in a championship battle and then humiliated by the victor's young son, he vows never to lose another fight.  He proves himself against a gigantic westerner and soon falls victim to both pride and the fake adulation of his disciples (who are only there for the beer as it were).  After attacking another Master whom he thinks has beaten one of his mates for no good reason (erroneously as it turns out), he kills him only to find that revenge is taken against his mother and young daughter.

Distraught he runs away and nearly dead lands on the shores of a rural village where he is befriended by a blind young peasant.  He sojourns here for some years until he realises the follies of his ways and returns home to honour his dead, promising her that he will return.  He finds that foreigners now have the dominant hand in his country and challenges the American fighter who calls the Chinese weak.  He also organises the many schools of wushu into one union, which still exists today.  Finally he is forced by the nasty foreigners to defeat four of their best men and when it seems that he may be victorious, he is poisoned.  His last opponent is a noble Japanese warrior who establishes Huo's legend by letting him die undefeated.

Directed by Ronny Yu in Mandarin this film certainly displays Li's abilities, but the middle section is too slow and sloppy and the end section does get a little holier than thou at times.  While it would make a suitable epitaph to his Martial Arts career, I can't help but hope that there will be more to come.