An excellent movie.
Fearless is the semi-fictional story of real-life master fighter Huo Yuanjia's rise to prominence as a symbol of Chinese pride during the turn of the 20th century, a time when power brokers from Europe, Japan and the US were having their way with China at the expense of its native citizens. The film begins with a sweeping aerial shot of Shanghai in 1910 and sets the scene: Huo Yuanjia is about to fight 4 challengers from Japan, Germany, Spain and England.
He easily dispatches the first three and as he faces off with the Japanese challenger, we flash back to Huo's childhood where he watches his father, a master fighter, hold back on delivering a killing blow to his opponent, which ultimately costs him the match. The film takes off from there, and it flies. We watch Huo emerge into adulthood and become a fighter of extraordinary talent who has never lost a fight. His supreme skill makes him headstrong, and tragedy soon follows. A happy accident leads into the deeply meditative and contemplative second movement that bridges Act I and Act III, where Huo comes to live in a rural village on a hillside and discovers things about himself, preparing him to return to the world of competitive fighting with a clearer sense of purpose. One question still remains... has he become the man his father was? Is he even capable of mercy, or will he let the killing blow land?
The film is technically gorgeous. The costuming, set design and art direction are all first-rate and of extraordinarily high quality. There are a wide range of costumes too, from authentic Chinese garments to Indian army uniforms to early 20th century European business dress. The location they found to shoot the rural village scenes was perfect; they got the lighting, color, contrasts and saturation just right. The scenes in the lotus pond are amazing. L2R makes a good point about the fighting relying a bit heavily on digital enhancements, but the fight sequences are still eye poppingly good. The soundtrack complements the action well; the final action sequence, which relies almost exclusively on music and not sound effects, comes off brilliantly.
I think this is just an extraordinary film, especially considering it's a genre film, and the action genre is typically devoid of any kind of depth. These characters, although they aren't that deep, manage to be sympathetic, tragic, heroic and moving. This is how an action flick should be done, which stands in stark contrast to a film like... Spiderman 2, where the big character conflict (in between battling mutants) is whether or not Spidey will hang up his spandex suit for good.
A beautiful film. Good for Jet Li; always best to go out on a high note.
