FEARLESS

Directed by Ronny Yu
Written by Chris Chow & Christine To
Director of Hang-Sang Poon
Music by Shigeru Umebayashi
Cast: Jet Li, Shido Nakamura, Li Sun, Yong Dong, Hee Ching Paw, Yun Qu & Nathan Jones

2006/104 mins/Color/Dolby Digital 5.1
2.40:1 anamorphic/Mandarin/Hong Kong/NTSC Region 1

Review from the Universal DVD

Like all the great stories, after much success comes tragedy and despair. After destroying all of the fighters around his city, a heart breaking tragedy strikes Huo Yuanjia's family. In order to find redemption, he leaves his past behind and decide to become a better and new man. But when China's pride is hurt from foreigner, he returns to Tianjin and takes on any European, American, or Japanese fighters the outsiders bring in to demoralize the natives. Soon enough and not surprisingly, Huo becomes a hero and most importantly a legend.

Ronny Yu's movie loosely tell the story of Chinese martial arts master Huo Yuanjia who lived from 1869 to 1910. Huo Yuanjia was the founder of the Jin Wu Sports Federation. The famous Yuen Wo Ping, choreographed all of the fights just like he did with Li on the legendary FIST OF LEGEN. As expected, all of them are supperbly executed but many moves are simply impossible to do for a human being taking out some of the reality of the whole thing. Still wirework and CGI were kept to a minimum.

This is supposedly Jet Li's final martial arts and its a great finale in his amazing career of films. FEARLESS is a much better film then the recent movies Jet Li has been in, especially DANY THE DOG and HERO. For genre fan, its cool to remember that Ronny Yu directed FREDDY VS. JASON, THE BRIDE OF CHUCKY and THE BRIDE WITH BLACK HAIR. After being a huge box office success in Asia, Universal released FEARLESS on DVD.

The film is presented is a amazingly perfect 2.40:1 anamorphic aspect ratio. The colors are rich, vibrant and superbly saturated. There is simply no complains to do. We get the choice of wither Mandarin or English Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Both of them are loud, crisp and clear. Subtitles are available in English, Spanish and French. More importantly, there is two version of the film available on disc; the theatrical and unrated versions. There is less than a minute difference between the two but its more violent.

As for the extras, we get a deleted scene, 'A Fearless Journey' is a short but interesting 16 minutes featurette on the film and its making. Li and Yu freely talk about all of the aspects of the film. The disc features animated menus, 20 chapters stop. It features trailers for BALLS OF FURY, HOT FUZZ, AMERICAN PIE THE NAKED MILE and THE BLACK DAHLIA. The disc comes in a keep case and without a booklet or inlay card.

(aka HUOO YUAN JIA)

Be sure to check out the official web site and online game.

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2007. ©