FILM ARCHIVES

‘Jet Li’s Fearless’

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Jet Li’s “final martial arts epic” ought to be a treat for Hong Kong fans, and it is . . . for about half an hour. But when a nonsanctioned fight goes too far and brings terrible retribution down upon Li’s Huo Yuanjia, he flees the city and goes into voluntary exile. So does the movie. Rescued at sea and brought to a farm, Huo (based on a real early-20th-century martial arts pioneer) learns how to be calm and engages in some tedious crops-as- metaphor-for-life nonsense. Li has come to worry that viewers weren’t getting the right message about martial arts. But this is an action movie, and people don’t come to be preached to; the Terminator flicks also favored world peace but didn’t pause the action for nearly an hour to rub it in.

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