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According to all the things that were said in the movie’s trailer, this will be the last martial arts movie from Jet Li. However, it doesn’t mean that Li will stop making movies. Anyway, since this movie is a historical movie that can be branded as the Chinese equivalent of the Canadian movie The Rocket, the expectations were definitely high. Unfortunately, even though the movie maker’s intention are present, it can’t be said that Fearless is a masterpiece. All in all, Ronny Yu’s Fearless could have been better if more attention has been given for the script. Despite the movie’s flaws, we can always appreciate Jet Li’s hand-to-hand fight scenes.

Many people on the web wrote a critique of this last movie from Jet Li (Hero). However, I do not pretend that I’m entirely right. This critique solely reflects my objective vision at best and also a personal vision at worst about Fearless. As it was mentioned in the introduction, the main problem with Fearless is its script. Obviously, I’m not saying that the movie is a complete piece of shit, but when I watched the original version on DVD, I had the feeling that Fearless is one of those good movies that could have been better. That leads me to say that the movie had a very great potential because of the historical subject and the themes that it deals with.

In the first act, the movie viewers will get to see a string of spectacular fight scenes that follow each other. These fight scenes are apparently used to show the first facet of Huo Yuan Jia’s arrogance. In my opinion, this part almost made me think about the movie The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk. Of course, Jet Li is definitely good in playing comedy, which means that because of his experience in Corey Yuen’s The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk he can handle the first act very well. To be very honest with you, the first act of the movie wasn’t really interesting, but hopefully, thanks to the movie’s quick pace, we get to advance to the second act without worry.

Unfortunately, the biggest flaw of Fearless lies in the second act. During this period of the movie, the main character Huo Yuan Jia (played by Jet Li) is psychologically consuming himself because of his remorse. Moreover, he’s going through a radical period of psychological transformation that will give him his wisdom and also his new definition of martial arts. As strange as it might look, it seems that the scriptwriter was so in a hurry that he couldn’t even describe very well the transition into the mind of Huo Yuan Jia as a result of a journey of a few years with his new friends (those who saw the movie know what I’m talking about). In addition to the incapacity of the scriptwriter to represent the psychological evolution of Huo Yuan Jia, we can also talk about Jet Li’s clumsy acting. While Li effortlessly rendered the first state of mind of his character, we can’t say that he manages to show the transition. His facial expression is completely devoid of sense and his eyes don’t implicitly tell us something about Huo Yuan Jia. Finally, the middle of the movie is just so slow and some scenes should have been cut.

After we went through a terrible second act, Fearless is starting to recuperate its strength in the third and last act. However this is really too late, because while Jet Li can show, without too much nuances, Huo Yuan Jia’s new vision about martial arts, it is pretty sad to see that most of the characters remain psychologically one-dimensional. Without a doubt, the scriptwriter is capable to show the impact that Huo Yuan Jia had on the people who heard about him, but the depiction of the characters is too perfunctory and artificial. This depiction needs more depth. Besides, to be very concise, what I really like with Fearless is that the movie presents the things that Huo Yuan Jia made, but I didn’t like the fact that the scriptwriter didn’t try to present the Huo Yuan Jia man behind Huo Yan Jia the legend. At least, Jet Li can still be proud of the efforts that he made to portray a hero that is known in the collective conscience of the Chinese people.

At the first look, Fearless might look like a grandiose movie, but unfortunately, the movie doesn't present very well the History of China from the 1880s to 1910 as a background to the story. Obviously, we do know that Huo Yuan Jia stood up against the Westerner superpowers who occupied China by defeating his opponents in fights. However, few connections are made with Huo Yuan Jia's life and the History of China. Because of that, the average movie viewers might believe that some of China's city were not occupied by some Western countries. To sum up my point of view, let me tell you that the storyline puts too much emphasis on Huo Yuan Jia's life.

Although this last martial arts movie from Jet Li is brimming with flaws and also good intention, we, as movie viewers, just get rejoiced to see Jet Li's hand-to-hand combat. Jet Li certainly lacks a little bit the ability to act and render complex dramatic feelings, but he didn't lose the touch when it comes to filming fight scenes. It's true that some wires were used during certain scenes, but the fight scenes are realistic enough to satisfy the purists of martial arts movies. After all, I don't want to sound rude, but as opposed to Jackie Chan (Shanghai Knights), Jet Li won't be remembered as an international star who gradually lost his fighting talents.

Finally, just to be very honest with you, I did like this last martial arts movie from Jet Li, but I believe that Li should have chosen another movie director who is better than Ronny Yu. This Chinese movie director certainly knows how to film action scenes without making any innovation, but as far as I know, Yu is not known for masterpieces. Despite its average storyline that could have been improved, Fearless is not a movie that will cast Hero in the shadow. In fact, just consider Fearless as what it trully is: a movie meant for entertainment.

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