Japanese Master Fumio: “What style is that?”
Chen Zhen: “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”
From Fist of Legend

Fist of Legend was made in 1994, directed by Gordon Chan and featuring fight choreography by Yuen Woo-ping (of The Matrix fame), and produced by and starring Jet Li.  Its a remake Bruce Lee’s 1971 film Fist of Fury.

Many of the key elements of the fight scenes for The Matrix were lifted from this film.  In this fight, Jet fights veteran Japanese action star Kurata Yasuaki (Eastern Condors).  The cool thing about this movie fight (and this movie) is that the fighters discuss and analyze fighting strategies and techniques while they are fighting.

I wish I could clearly remember the details now but I saw this first on a VHS tape (badly) dubbed and subtitled.  Then later I saw the nice version released in the Hong Kong explosion to US video in the mid 2000s (after Jackie Chan became a star in the US).  The discussions about fighting in this Fumio-Chen Zhen fight were different.  In one, they discuss timing and in the other they discussed angle – something like that.  Both discussions were informed.

In Fist of Legend, the lead character keeps learning to become a better and better fighter as the film goes on, learning from each fight, like Kenichi or almost like Groundhog Day (one of my favorite films).

Sammo Hung, , legendary Opera Company brother of Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, and co-star and choreographer of Ip Man 2, made several movies and a TV series about Wing Chun.

Prodigal Son. Best Wing Chun movie ever.  Until Ip Man.

Warriors 2. Haven’t seen it. Except for this clip.

Wing Chun – the TV series. Loved it.

But skipped through it to dodge the boring parts. On Youtube in its entirety (a little difficult to find it all because they are not all under the same naming convention).

Sammo Hung as Coolest Sifu ever. Except for my Sifus!

The guy at the end of the clip in the scene with the bun (who eventually becomes a villian) is Sammo Hung’s son, Sammy.

The greatest martial arts movie of all time.

No other film combines the high production values, great acting, engaging story line and above all, the escalating series of fights, each a show stopper, each topping the previous fight which seemed to be the best fight you’ve ever seen.

This is Jet Li‘s Citizen Kane, a remake of Bruce Lee‘s iconic Chinese Connection aka Fist of Fury, telling the story of the Japanese occupation of China in the Thirties (clearly an event stamped into the consciousnesses of Chinese everywhere – also depicted recently in the recent hit Ip Man).

Chen Zhen (Jet Li), an engineering student in Japan, must return to Shanghai and avenge the murder of his teacher, who was killed in a challenge match by a Japanese fighter clearly unequal to the task.  Chen Zen blazes a bloody trail through the Japanese martial artists occupying his homeland.

Every fight is the best fight you’ve ever seen and every fight is better than the last.  Jet Lee‘s fighting style, a JKD-esque mix of boxing, kung fu, and wu shu weapons stuff, is dynamic, crisp, and brutally effective.  I always say that fighting and dancing are a lot alike and Fist of Legend‘s climax ( a fight between Lee and Canadian kickboxing champ Billy Chow) is like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat – the best of the genre.

This movie heavily influenced The Matrix – they used the same choreographer and grabbed many of the shots verbatim.