Fearless the Director’s Cut by Ronny Yu Yan Tai (2005)
21 January 2007I honestly loved the theatrical cut of Fearless, though it did feel like something was missing. Now after seeing the original cut, now released in Hong Kong as the director’s cut, I can truly understand why Jet Li has come out and said this will be his last true martial arts film, about the true spirit of Wushu, because I can’t see him or anyone topping this film on that subject. This is damn near a perfect film. Sure you can see a little wire work, but this is still top notch martial arts fighting, and the story, acting and production design are all fantastic. And knowing that this is in fact based on a true story makes it even better. The most depressing thing is realizing that they made Ronny Yu cut down this near perfect film in the first place. I mean I enjoyed the theatrical, and even have the US HD DVD of the unrated version, which is 1 hour and 41 minutes long, versus the director’s cut on DVD at 141 minutes. It is depressing because the HD DVD is one of the best looking discs I have ever seen, with even the best looking subtitles, and you cannot say the same about the Hong Kong disc, but I will probably never watch anything but the director’s cut again. If this had been the film released it could have easily topped THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER and THE BANQUET for China’s Oscar contenders, this film is really that good.
This film starts very differently from the theatrical, this time in modern times with Michelle Yeoh at the Olympic commitee making the case for Wushu to become an Olympic sport, on the basis of the story of the great Huo Yan Jia who lived 100 years in the past. First we see him scruffy and run down on a boat, and then we go back to his childhood, growing up as a young asthmatic boy with his father a master martial artist of the Huo school (Colin Chou Ngai Sing). His father insist’s he study so he can take the exams and get an office, but all Yan Jia wants to do is become a martial artist, so he practices on the side, and allows his best friend Nong Jinsun to do all his work. When his father enters a martial competition his father, Yan Jia gets in a fight with his father’s rival son, and when his father holds back the killing blow, he is destroyed, and vows never to lose. He steals his fathers martial arts manual, and has Nong Jinsun copy it, and he uses it to beat his rival, and he will never lose again. We then cut to Yan Jia (Jet Li) grown up and still fighting contest after contest.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Huo Yan Jia is brutal and all he cares about is beating each and every opponent he goes against, breaking bones, and crushing them. He spoils his daughter, and yet never comes home to her, staying out and drinking all night with his supposed followers who just want the free drinks and to become brutal men. His mother tries to teach him to be a good man, but Huo Yan Jia is arrogant, not caring about anything but being the best. Not listening to his best friend Nong Jinsun (Yong Dong) who owns the most successful restaurant in town, and who Huo Yan Jia owes a huge debt too because of him comping all of his followers in booze and food.
Huo Yan Jia still has one person he has not fought, a real master, and when one of his followers is beat up by the master (Huo Yan Jia does not know it was because his follower disrespected the master’s wife). So Yan Jia goes to his friends restaurant on the master’s birthday and challenges him. He brutally fights him, destroying the restaurant, and then uses the Huo finishing move that his father never hit with, and punches through the master’s chest. Yan Jia then goes drinking with his followers, but the master’s adopted son take’s revenge and kills Yan Jia’s mother and daughter. Yan Jia freaks when he gets home and goes to take revenge, but the step son kills himself, and Yan Jia leaves without harming the master’s daughter or wife, as he has hurt them enough.
Yan Jia then leaves, wandering out on his own, becoming homeless, unable to deal with what his actions have caused. He wanders around without a life, barely alive, a shell of a man, until he falls into a river and almost dies.
Yan Jia is then picked up by the blind Moon (Betry Sun Li) and her grandmother, who take him and clean him up. All he does at first is lay there in the animal stall with old Ox that is getting too old to work (and who the small boy that lives with them loves more than anything). It is obvious that Moon likes him very much. They name him Ox because he sleeps more than the ox. Eventually they put him to work. At first he just tries to plant the rice seedlings too quickly and in huge clumps, but when he sees the blind Moon fixing his work at night, he goes to her and learns from her, and after years and seasons he has become one with the land, and works like the farmers, and helps Moon and her grandmother in everything.
Then the small boy steals an ox from another village and is caught, so the villagers go to help him. He is being hit until an incense stick stops burning. Yan Jia takes his place, but to beat by martial arts. At first he does nothing but take the hits, until grandma tells him that he does not need to fight back, but he does not need to be hit, so Yan Jia starts blocking, and eventually flips the other guy, but stops him from being hurt. Yan Jia is slowly working out the true meaning of martial arts. The young boys want to learn from him, but he refuses because he does not want martial arts to be just for fighting back and forth until someone wins, it has to be about something more.
When Moon tells him she will soon be leaving to visit her parent’s graves, and he then decides that he must too leave, but he promises to return.
Yan Jia returns to his town and finds his house almost empty, only saved by the kindness of his best friend Nong Jinsun. Nong Jingsun won’t talk to his old friend, but Yan Jia has changed, and has new ideas about how martial arts should be used. He reads about an American Hercules O’Brien (Nathan Jones) who has defeated every Chinese who fought him. He finally shows this to his friend, and his friend gives him money to back him. Yan Jia refuses to sign a death certificate, choosing to fight to learn, though O’Brien does not know this. He fights brutally, and refuses to quit even when he lost, but when Yan Jia saves him from dyeing, he understands, and gives up to his better.
Yan Jia then moves to Shanghai along with Nong Jingsun, who has sold his restaurant to fund Yan Jia’s Jungwoo Sports Federation. He wants to unite all schools of martial arts together and create it as a sport to better yourselves, and not fight amongst yourselves. So that China can be strong against the world. And he is successful, so successful that the foreign powers get together to stop him and set up a match with 4 foreigners against just him, and he must beat them all.
Yan Jia gets a visit from the Japanese fighter Anno Tanaka (Shido Nakamura) and discusses his martial philosophy, and he makes Anno respect him and think.
Yan Jia goes to the contest, and first beats the German (Brandon Rhea), Spanish (Anthoy De Longis) and English Fighter (Jean Claude Lueyer) and ties with Tanaka in his first round, but then the Japanese ambassador has Yan Jia poisoned, so he starts spitting blood in the second round, but Tanaka holds back. Yan Jia realizes it is too late, and continues the contest, and seems to be losing, until he goes for the final blow that he has used before, but stops it and collapses. He is about to be declared the loser, but Tanaka gives in, realizing he would be dead, and it is Yan Jia that wins, though he dies later, aged only in his 40’s, but having changed the entire Chinese Martial world.
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This extended cut is so much more than that. It is a complete retelling of the film, with much more on the importance of Huo Yan Jia’s philosophy, and how he came to it. That martial arts is not about fighting, but about bettering oneself and actually the biggest opponent is yourself. This version of the film is such an amazing improvement, it is how the film should always be, and that is possible the best martial arts film of all time.
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