I’d been meaning to watch LEGEND OF A FIGHTER (1982) and FEARLESS (2006) back-to-back ever since I got the FEARLESS DVD last year for Christmas, but it was only after watching HEROES OF THE EAST and THE CHINESE BOXER last weekend as part of my Shaw Bros. frenzy that I finally resolved to devote the time to it. All four films deal with Chinese kung fu being challenged by Japanese martial arts, and LEGEND and FEARLESS both focus on the same historical figure, Huo Yuan Chia, an early 20th century wushu champ based in Tianjin.

LEGEND spends almost half of its running time on the character’s boyhood years and his burning desire to learn kung fu despite his father’s refusal to teach him. (He’s played as a teen by Yuen Yat Chor, one of the famed Yuen clan.) He has to prove himself to us, the viewer, and to his teacher, a Japanese tutor played by Yasuaki Kurata (who’s also in HEROES OF THE EAST and FIST OF LEGEND), who secretly teaches the boy kung fu in the guise of instruction in calligraphy and Confucian precepts and such. When the boy grows up—played by a different actor, Leung Kar Yan—we see that he’s learned his stuff and become the best at the family’s style of kung fu, surprising the hell out of his father (Phillip Ko), who finally acknowledges him as his true heir. So there’s the appropriate build-up to Huo’s emergence as the local wushu champ.

Not so in FEARLESS, which immediately opens with three bouts between Huo Yuanjia, as the name is spelled here, and various western challengers. And then, after the film’s title flashes, there’s a cut to Huo’s childhood, where he watches his father teach wushu to students. This only lasts less about ten minutes, because at the 15 minute mark, Jet Li emerges, full-grown and an established local champ ready to take on all comers, a position in the narrative that took almost an hour to get to in LEGEND. I understand that they wanted the script to adopt a three-act structure that positions Huo’s early cockiness and the tragedy it causes as the first act; with his flight to the countryside and subsequent renewal on a farm with the help of a beautiful and virtuous blind girl (Sun Li) constituting the second act; and his return to Tianjin, regaining of his reputation and subsequent representation of China in a match with three westerners and a Japanese fighter in Shanghai as the last act. But still, the overall impact was weakened for me by the lack of any appreciable build-up. I like to see these guys earning their victories.

So what else bothered me? After the simplicity and directness of LEGEND, I found FEARLESS taking itself way too seriously, from a directorial standpoint, with lots of slow-mo camera moves and sweeping orchestral music pouring over every dramatic moment and an abundance of unnecessary overhead shots. Also, in the fight scenes there’s way too much post-production computer manipulation of the image, what with artificially sped-up or slowed-down motion alternating all the time! I guess I’m just too attached to the old-school way of doing things--set the camera back far enough to get all the action in the frame, shout “Action!” and let the actors do their stuff. Interestingly, LEGEND's director, Yuen Wo Ping, directed the fight scenes in FEARLESS.

Also, the role of Huo Yuan Chia’s Japanese tutor is a significant one in LEGEND. He’s not in FEARLESS at all.

On the FEARLESS DVD, there’s a deleted scene offered as an extra. It takes place during the second act on the farm. A boy is taken and punished by a neighboring village for trying to steal a cow. They beat him with sticks until Jet and the entire village show up. Jet offers to take the punishment for the boy, but the guy leading the beating decides that an adult should get harsher treatment... It’s a good scene and it would have perked up the film’s lagging middle section.