霍元甲 (Huo Yuan Jia)

I just watched Jet Li's 霍元甲/Fearless, supposedly his last martial arts movie. I had been tempted to watch it since the KBox session with the history boys the other day. Both Ah Ben's rendition of Jay's song and the action in the music video impressed me lots.

Anyway, I loved the movie. It has the usual kungfu message--"thou shalt not fight unnecessarily, ye kungfu kid," but this is the first time Jet Li is playing the antihero since my childhood days of seeing him in that righteous pigtail. So it's a little disturbing, at least until after his redemption.

Set in the late Qing period, the movie plays up the Chinese cultural pride as Li's earlier Wong Fei Hong films, albeit in a less chauvinistic, anti-imperial tone. Probably as a response to the tense East Asian relations, the central theme is friendship and harmony. Huo Yuan Jia beats the American boxer but does not kill him; and the boxer declares Huo victorious. Huo perishes in the hands of the wicked Japanese businessman, but fights a final honourable duel with the Japanese warrior.

Some snotty professor said this is what history should be really about... My classmate can write a good paper on Chinese civil society through a study of Huo Yuan Jia's Pure Martial Arts Association (精武体育会) that really existed and historians can dismiss the movie as fiction, but ultimately this excellent movie uses the past to advocate a peaceful present. Oh, and the action and Matrix effects raawwkz too!! =)