Jet Li has made his last Martial Arts epic. Whilst I am not here to rag on his acting talents as a surprising number reviewers do, one wonders what the USP of a martial artsless Jet Li will be. So let’s just say that Fearless might be Jet Li’s last big Hong Kong martial arts movie and be done with it. It certainly doesn’t stop Li from throwing his all into this picture. And in its story of an inspirational martial artist whose honour and ability brought pride back to the Chinese, one cannot help seeing a few flattering parallels with Li himself. Apart from his occasional turns as a villain for Hollywood*, his career has been playing gentle battlers.
Hollywood viewers will have missed his breezy comic timing which stems from this good humour, and in Fearless he is much more uncomfortable when his character has to be dislikeable. He might also be uncomfortable in those segments because he is clearly playing himself twenty years younger. And yet he cannot hide his age. We are not talking Jackie Chan “made of leather” yet, but he just doesn’t look in his mid twenties. And nothing is done to age him as he reaches his actual age. Fearless is a pretty good fun biopic, with some excellently staged and crunching fight scenes: but you can see why it might be his last. He isn’t young any more.
*Even in Lethal Weapon 4 you kind of hoped Li would smash Mel Gibson’s face in, just because he has a much better claim of being a Human Lethal Weapon.