Leader By Day, Patriotic Icon By Night
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen takes place primarily in Shanghai during the 1920s. Thought to be dead during his operations on the Western Front in WWI, Chen Zhen has returned to Shanghai unbeknownst to most people other than his closest friends. He disguises himself and goes by the name Ku. His friend Master Liu (played by familiar Asian star Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) is the owner of of a cabaret club known as Casablanca. Master Liu “hires” Chen and makes him a senior employee of the club. Together the two are able to keep a close eye on the Japanese presence in Shanghai.
Tensions are thick and between the Chinese and Japanese as Japan begins to move military operations closer and closer into China. Internal conflict and betrayals are on the rise within China’s own people and the looming threat of the Japanese occupation is only making matters worse. Always willing to serve his country, Chen Zhen begins to battle the Japanese and their corruption secretly. During the day, he is Ku, a well mannered, smart, seemingly innocent man. By night, he is Chen Zhen — working to get closer and closer to Colonel Chikaraishi’s (Ryu Kohata) operations and lead efforts to repel the Japanese in anyway he can.
To keep his identity hidden and, I suspect, to promote fear in the Japanese, Chen Zhen dawns the classic Kato / Black Mask costume — in the film it’s based off of a movie character known as The Black Mask. This apparent movie character is all too real for the Japanese though. Zhen is an expert martial artist and uses high flying, acrobatic kicks and swift punches to beat the Japanese into submission.
The movie does a good job of catering to martial arts action fans with some very nicely choreographed scenes. My favorite fight scene takes place in a newspaper office, where one of Chen’s friends, the newspaper editor, gets interrogated and beaten by Japanese who want to keep him silent. The multi-room brawl that ensues is a visual treat. On the whole, though, Ip Man and Ip Man 2 have more impressive fight scenes, but these are pretty great nonetheless.
Legend of the Fist is much more than just a high flying martial arts movie. This is also partially a war movie, spy film, romance, and a heck there is a touch of film noir, too. The spy and romance angles are interesting; let’s just say Chen Zhen isn’t the only one with a hidden identity. Actress Qi Shu plays as the alcoholic dancer Kiki, a love interest to Ku. That subplot is a key part of the movie and it does a lot to add more depth and balance to the overall experience. Bo Huang’s character, a detective, adds in some welcomed film noir elements and some comic relief, too.
All in all, it’s a great film, however, there are some moments that seemed forced if not out of place. The biggest issue I have is near the end when Chen Zhen heads to the Japanese dojo, not unlike in the aforementioned movies by Lee and Li. Well, I don’t mind that this scene was redone, but having Donnie attempt to look and sound like Bruce felt out of place. Other than the last fifteen minutes, there’s very little not to love about Legend of the Fist.
Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
Well Go USA is offering this movie in standard and Collector’s Edition versions. I received the Collector’s Edition for review. It comes nicely packaged in a standard case that contains two discs (one on either side of the case internals). A removable dust cover is also included. The film is on disc one. Presented in 1080p with English and Mandarin 5.1 audio tracks, the technical presentation quality is excellent: colors are vibrant, image quality is consistently sharp, and the cinematography shines thanks to this high quality transfer.
Disc two, a DVD, contains all of the extras. There are about ninety-eight minute of extra features that are split into two categories: interviews and behind the scenes. The behind the scenes category features scenes from Tianjin Street, Market Place, Newspaper Office, Japanese Headquarters, Student Movement, and Hongkou Dojo. All of these are roughly three to five minutes, some are a bit longer than that. These are all just raw looks at the cast and crew making these scenes happen. Subtitles are presented as all dialogue is in Mandarin. It’s really cool to see Donnie working with the other stars and the crew to nail the scene. Most of these features have audio, but, interestingly, a few do not and you get just the footage.
The interview segments are roughly the same length as the behind the scenes features and contain the following cast and crew: Andrew Lau, Gordon Chan, Donnie Yen, Shu Qi, Anthony Wong, Huang Bo, Kohata Ryuichi. Each of these is a one on one interview. The cast tends to talk about their character and their position in the story, and working with the other actors, which is typical.
Both extra feature categories are interesting and well worth a look. With that, lets get to the summary…