My first milestone, 10 reviews. And for this auspicious occasion I’m putting all other reviews on hold so I can take an in depth look at a film I just saw… Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen.
Once again we are looking at a martial arts film, so keep in mind many of the things I said in my Fighter in the Wind review hold true for this film. I will try not to repeat myself too much.
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen is a 2010 martial arts film starring the international martial arts star Donnie Yen. The story revolves around the continuing exploits of the martial artist Chen Zhen. Chen Zhen was a character originally from Fist of Fury, Bruce Lee’s second Golden Harvest film and his second role as the male lead following just a year after his first leading role in Fists of Fury. Yeah, apparently Bruce Lee movies are notorious for having ambiguous and often changing titles. Since then the character of Chen Zhen has been raised to iconic status by various martial artists in at least four films and eight television series, making him almost as visible as the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung. In the early 90’s as Jackie Chan repopularized Chinese martial arts movies in America, there was a mad rush made by several martial artist / actors to become the next superstar and the Chen Zhen story was retold a few times to showcase their talents. Most notably was the remake of Fist of Fury, Fist of Legend starring Jet Li. The lesser known Fist of Fury: Sworn Vengeance was a 1995 television series that has never been brought to America starring Donnie Yen. All of these projects have focused on the beginnings of the Chen Zhen story and we will look at each individually to see what influenced this film. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen picks up where the story left off and follows Chen Zhen through his exile from Shanghai to World War I France and back again under an assumed identity. There the movie takes on new themes and influences so I will talk about those later.
The story is very loosely based on historical events. The Chinese master Huo Yuanjia, famous for defeating several foreign fighters in high profile matches, helped found the Shanghai martial arts school referenced in these stories, Chin Woo Athletic Association, dedicated to fitness and athletic excellence as opposed to learning Kung Fu for the purpose of fighting. His association with the school along with several other masters drew martial arts experts from all over China to teach there. The scandal began in 1910 when Huo Yuanjia died six months after founding the school. As his health quickly deteriorated he was admitted to a local hospital and died shortly after. A later autopsy showed that there were high levels of arsenic in his body however it is not known if he was poisoned or the natural Chinese remedies he was being administered contained arsenic trioxide, a common compound in traditional Chinese medicine. Conspiracy theories arose around his death with speculation that he was poisoned however there is no hard evidence that this is the case. While the character Chen Zhen was created for the original Bruce Lee movie, he is loosely based on a student of Huo Yuanjia named Liu Zhensheng.
For the last 70 some years there has been a lot of tension between China and Japan. Something about Japan invading mainland China, raping, pillaging, and oppressing the Chinese populace…or something like that. So it’s no surprise that in the original Fist of Fury the bad guys were the age old enemy of China, the Japanese! The story follows Chen Zhen, the star pupil of his martial arts school who has left Shanghai, only to return to find his old master dead. Further investigations lead him to find that his master died fighting against the head of the local Japanese dojo. From there it becomes a pretty cut and dried crime story based on revenge. It involves a lot of snooping around by Bruce Lee, donning several ridiculous costumes to evade detection as everyone in Shanghai is looking for him. Quickly the Japanese realize that to get to Chen Zhen they need to strike at his weakness, his friends and school. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if anyone at his school was able to defend themselves, they’re only full time Kung Fu students after all. The movie ends with everyone at his Kung Fu School massacred by the Japanese and then Bruce killing their master and the round eyed devil from Russia who tries to finish him off. The final scene of the film is Bruce Lee leaping at a group of local police unable to contain his blood lust with a freeze frame and an audio clip of gunfire implying Chen Zhen to be very dead. And to be completely fair to his firing squad they did show up looking for a known murderer who had just killed everyone at a local martial arts school and who then tried to attack them. While the Japanese where the villains and the time period was early 20th century in Shanghai, the nationalistic themes were almost non-existent. There were a few scenes that brought attention to the racism brought down on the Chinese by invading foreigners, not just the Japanese, but the murder mystery and revenge is by far the most important aspect of the movie.
The spiritual successor, Fist of Legend changes things up quite a bit. Chen Zhen, now played by Jet Li who is a devout Buddhist pacifist, is studying abroad in Japan when the movie starts. Not only is he eager to learn from the Japanese, there is a budding romance between him and a Japanese girl. However, right from the start we are shown images of nationalistic and racist sentiments held by both the Japanese and the Chinese in Kyoto. This is a theme held throughout the film, that while the Japanese are bad guys for sticking their noses into Chinese affairs all the time, both sides were antagonistic to each other. The true evils of this movie are shown to be the Japanese military, who only want to invade Japan and kill the inferior Chinese, and the love of money, the only Chinese character who is really determined to be a bad guy was bribed by the Japanese and didn’t really have a redemption story as part of his character development. At the end there is a standoff between the Japanese soldiers and the local Chinese police after Chen Zhen has killed everyone…again, and the Japanese ambassador calls an end to hostilities. Chen Zhen gives himself up as a scapegoat for the murder of the Japanese general. I thought this was a little weird since he was the one who did the killing anyway. It wasn’t really a scapegoat as they say in the movie. There is an off camera execution but we see at the end of the film that Chen Zhen was released and the ambassador faked the execution and let him go. It ends with him fleeing Shanghai and returning to his Japanese girlfriend. So while nationalism was a huge part of this film, it was not the central theme. In fact, out of all the incarnations this is the most a martial arts film. This is revealed through the longest fight in the movie between Chen Zhen and the greatest fighter in Japan, his girlfriend’s uncle. Before they fight they talk about martial arts and style choices, and as they fight they blindfold themselves so that the older Japanese fighter is not at a disadvantage when he gets dust in his eyes. Then they congratulate each other at the end of the fight. It is a battle of equals not bent on killing each other but instead learning from each other.
Both of these are very interesting stories with different focuses, but I find Donnie Yen’s 1995 project Fist of Fury: Sworn Vengeance to be far more interesting. This is a television series centered around the same character Chen Zhen, but this story follows him from his beginnings in rural China. He travels to Shanghai to raise the money to rebuild the family farm only to get sucked into the underworld and work as an enforcer. He encounters the Chin Woo school through the trickery of his superiors and becomes aware of his recent sins and joins as a student of Huo Yuanjia to redeem himself. From there it is very episodic, but stresses moralistic tales about the ideal qualities of a martial artist and shows Chen’s development into the character in the other versions. Only at the end do we enter the story of the death of Huo Yuanjia and Chen’s revenge. This is truly the most interesting portion of the series as Donnie Yen who has imitated the fighting style of Bruce Lee at a few points in the series now adopts the full style of Bruce Lee, complete with funny noises and hopping stances. Better yet, when he goes to attack the Japanese school the camera angles and choreography is nearly identical to the original 1972 Fist of Fury. Donnie Yen was the action choreographer for the whole series. Of note also is the fight scene between Huo Yuanjia and the other Shanghai martial arts masters in this series that is Donnie’s first attempt at the amazing fight sequence he later perfected with Sammo Hung in Ip Man 2. Content-wise the end of the series is a combination of the two previous versions. Most important, Chen is a flawed character out for blood, unlike Jet Li’s Chen, but at the same time he remains a martial artist with core values and morals. Most important in this version is the demonization of Japan. There were some hints at this in the original. The later version focused more on pan-Asian racism and only referenced the impending Japanese invasion to set the historical mood. This series however stressed anti-Japanese sentiments. In Chen’s own words, “Our greatest enemy is Japanese militarism”. As I said in a previous review there has been a trend in recent years to promote nationalism in martial arts films and this is an early example. The eventual climax is a fight against Japanese agents to prevent them from detonating toxic bombs to kill thousands in Shanghai to frame pro-China martial artists. In honor of the original it ends with the same freeze frame of Chen leaping into a hail of gun fire as he is executed for the massacre at the Japanese dojo.
Well, that was a lot of background but since Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen is a sequel, I found it necessary. This film begins with an interesting bit of WWI history as Chinese are sent to aid the allies as laborers in France. Donnie Yen returns as Chen who somehow survived his impromptu execution and fled to France to escape the Japanese. The film begins with an elaborate stunt sequence where Chen takes out a fortified machine gun nest and kills a whole group of Germans saving his unit. The brutality of the scene really made me feel sorry for the Germans, but it is one of the best action sequences I’ve seen in years. Chen returns to Shanghai with the stolen identity of one of his friends who died in the war giving hints of The Return of Martin Guerre but I think this has just become a story convention and isn’t really a reference to the French film. Coming back to China in the midst of civil war with the threat of an impending Japanese invasion, he finds work at a nightclub in Shanghai. At this nightclub while war is on all sides, military leaders of both sides of the Chinese conflict and the Japanese soldiers in Shanghai all come and drink together. Is this sounding familiar yet? How about this? There is a scene where the Japanese call for the singer on stage to sing a Japanese song which the other patrons aren’t thrilled about, so Chen steps up to the piano and leads the rest of the club in a song presumably known by all those from the war in France and they drown out the complaints of the Japanese. Need another hint? The name of the club is Casablanca. There are several more parallels between this movie and Casablanca in the character interactions and the involvement of underground resistance movements. And from there the film is less about martial arts, though there are some amazing fights, it is mostly about the development of the Chinese resistance to the growing Japanese militarism in China. While the previous incarnations were pretty lenient with their treatment of the Japanese, this version, similar to Yen’s previous Chen Zhen series, blasts them hard and all Japanese are working against the Chinese.
Another political undertone that is evident in this film is the issue of Taiwan. In this film Taiwan is already under Japanese control and it is stated that the Japanese run it with barbaric efficiency killing anyone who steps out of line. Combined with the Chinese nationalist rhetoric of a “united china” (with quotes to emphasize the number of times characters say this) and against the backdrop of the civil war between the north and south, this paints an eerie parallel to China’s persistent claims that one day Taiwan will be brought back to the control of the Peoples Republic.
Chen is all about concealing his identity in this film. While he is trying to conceal his identity as Chen from all of his new friends he openly opposes the Japanese spy networks in Shanghai masquerading as the fictional character, the masked warrior, from an action film, of which movie posters can be seen in the background of the street scenes. To my knowledge no such movie actually exists. However the costume of the black chauffeur’s outfit with a lone ranger mask matches almost exactly the costume of Kato from the Green Hornet. This American spy series was Bruce Lee’s big break into Hollywood as the Green Hornet’s manservant and sidekick. The outfit was also used by Jet Li in The Black Mask which also overlapped some cast members with Fist of Fury: Sworn Vengeance. Donnie, same as his previous Chen Zhen project was also the action director of this film and has become a major creative contributor in his recent films. The connection between Donnie’s original character Chen as well as his new costume, both of which are references to the film career of Bruce Lee is not coincidental.
After several bloodbaths Chen has a showdown at the old Japanese Dojo from the first film, now populated with bloodthirsty Japanese imperialists. He pulls off a decent Bruce Lee impression once again but with far more personal embellishments. He does the obligatory nunchucks scene but is nowhere near as skilled as Bruce Lee was. It’s a clear tribute but with as many tributes to the great martial artist I saw researching this review, this one nunchucks scene was the weakest. It ends with another showdown between Chen and the master of the Dojo, just like every time before, and ends with a very anticlimactic burst of energy from Chen who was just beaten to near unconsciousness. The whole end fight of the movie seemed forced and only included to take vengeance on the Japanese commander. Also, it seems like a tradition at this point to relive those fight scenes with Bruce and the Japanese whenever possible at this point. Even though this is a sequel to the story they still wanted to end it the same way. It ends with Chen riding off on his motorcycle, not getting shot, and the ending credits begin right after a clip of Chen dressed up in his masked warrior outfit implying a continued struggle against the impending Japanese invasion and possibly another sequel, who can say.
If we are going off which incarnation of the story is the most faithful to the original and has the most compelling plot and character development I would have to say that Fist of Fury: Sworn Vengeance was the best. It gets help from being a television series and has more time to deal with these issues. The sequel film Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen however is masterfully done. The actions sequences are breathtaking, the characters are complex, and the historical setting is very well done. I was actually a little disappointed to see this film. I thought it was going to be a silly martial arts film and it is probably the best thing I will see all summer. It earns its ranking on my list but it does set the bar pretty high for the rest of the season. If you are looking for martial arts films in general, I have not seen a Donnie Yen performance I haven’t liked. This is only one more in a long line of successes for this actor/martial artist/choreographer and I hope to see many more in the coming years.
Movies Referenced:
2010-Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
2010-Ip Man 2
2004-Fighter in the Wind
1996-The Black Mask
1995-Fist of Fury: Sworn Vengeance
1994-Fist of Legend
1982-The Return of Martin Guerre
1972-Fist of Fury
1971-Fists of Fury
1966-Green Hornet
1942-Casablanca
