Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010)
Reviewed by Michael Lauck
July 5, 2011
Andrew Lau directs Donnie Yen and Anthony Wong in a lavish pre-WWII Shanghai period piece? Sounds incredible! Unfortunately, things that sound too good to be true often are and this film is no exception. It isn’t terrible, but it is uneven and full of anachronisms and troubling gaps in the timeline. Perhaps seeing the original series would have helped and I, like most US viewers, have not had a chance to view the 1995 series. Little is mentioned of the time between the end of World War I and the action of the film, which should have been at least seven or so years if the time I thought I noticed (1925) is correct. If so, there are several problems with the bulk of costumes and music being inspired by the 1930s… if it was set in the ’30s then the gap between the end of WWI and the film is even more trou bling. The movie is also extremely clumsy in its Chinese nationalism; it is a subject that can’t be avoided, of course, given the main character. This does not mean that it needs to be done in a cartoonish or overly simplistic ways Lau chose. For example, there are complaints that China’s contribution of 150,000 non-combatant workers to the Allied WWI were largely ignored but fails to mention that this is a rather small number compared to the combined Allied forces of over 40 million! All in all, the troubled, simplistic story can’t be saved by the action, particularly when the final fight is a needless rehash (tribute?) to the fight in the original Bruce Lee film.
Even though the film centers of Donnie Yen and the cast includes the brilliant Anthony Wong, Shu Qi often steals the shows as nightclub singer and possible traitor Kiki.
There are multiple releases of this (single disk, multiple disks, etc); I watched the standard def DVD from Netflix so I am unsure of the quality and/or value of the extended special features found on some versions.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This film has some big time nationalism, but it’s simply taking advantage of real history. I found some very enlightening Wiki articles that actually gave me a greater appreciation of the film. The article “Chinese Labour Corps”, talks about the ill treatment by the British. Other articles talk about the increasing Japanese presence and overbearing, bullying approach to diplomacy. The most interesting article of all these is entitled “May Thirtieth Movement”. This was a student protest in 1925: ‘It began when Shanghai Municipal Police officers opened fire on Chinese protesters in Shanghai’s International Settlement. The shootings sparked international censure and nation-wide anti-foreign demonstrations.’ There’s something almost exactly like this in LOTF. Interesting stuff. I would give this 3.5 out of 5, because it does deliver exciting action, it just needed some tweaks here and there with the story.