Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen

[Drunk Monk]

Three Chinese flicks did well at Venice International Film Festival, this one, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, and Reign of Assassins. The other two have gone on to become box office smashes in PRC. This one, not so much. But it's the new Donnie Yen, so I had to check in with it.

I'm not finished watching it. I'm only about an hour in. Here's the review so far:
Yen plays Chen Zhen, the fictional hero from Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury who got killed in the end of that flick. But no, it's a new interpretation. This Chen Zhen dresses up like Kato and is more of a comic book hero. He does a lot of parkour wire work, which is amusing. So far, there's been two fight scenes which were nice doses of the old ultra-vi, but do the math. I'm an hour in and there's only been two fights? The first is at the very beginning. That's a long gap. The film is pretty opulent, sort of a roaring 20s Cabaret set. There's a lot of drinking and smoking. There's too much Shu Qi - she does like three songs in a row. She's also drunk most of the time, or pretending to be drunk. Anthony Wong reminds me a little of ED; if ED was a Chinese gangster, he would be just like Wong's character.

I hope to finish watching it tonight.

[Drunk Monk]

The last half hour was better. There were two more fights and a decent plot twist that I didn't see coming although I might have seen it if I had a better grasp of Mandarin. The third fight was entertaining. The finale was Donnie trying to re-do Bruce in Fist of Fury. It was a good fight, but it didn't work for me. After all, you can't touch Bruce, even if you're Donnie. Jet's spin on Bruce was better as he took it to a different place (as did Jackie and Stephan Chow arguably) but Donnie didn't really deliver. Nevertheless, I'm not about to fault Donnie for wanting to do Bruce.

I'm a bit at a loss in deciding whether I liked this film or not. It's got some good stuff, but it doesn't hang together well. It's not a DOOM film. I'm still working on finding a good Chollywood flick for DOOM 11/10.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I might have some footage to show . . . .

[Drunk Monk]

Rewatched this as part of my Donnie research for a Den piece I must crank out this weekend.

This aged well for me, or perhaps I’m mellowing. I recant my earlier tepid reaction. The fights were stylish and the story, although gratuitously nationalistic, was ok. I think I had a poor reaction to it because it had this new take on the character of Chen Zhen that was cool, but in the end, it reverts to Donnie doing brucesploitation - the dojo fight had some homage sequences to Fist of Fury. One fight sequence was a direct repetition from the ‘not sick men’ fight, even shot in the same way.

Despite the dated cgi Shanghai landscape, the world building of Shanghai on the brink of Japanese invasion. It’s got a classy style. Shu Qi vacillates fro super cute when drunk and super annoying. 

D00M recommended. 

Seen on Netflix