Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2011)

Let's be realistic.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Another fest of ass-kicking from Hong Kong superstar Donnie Yen, LEGEND OF THE FIST is loosely based on the same legend as Bruce Lee's FIST OF LEGEND and Jet Li's FIST OF LEGEND. Yen plays a masked freedom fighter battling against imperial Japanese forces during their occupation of Shanghai during the 1920s, and the film is a rousing, action-packed slice of superlative entertainment.Okay, so the action doesn't quite have the edge of the similar IP MAN and its sequel, but generally speaking it's very good indeed. There's a particular viciousness to the scenes involving Yen going around and battling or murdering his beleaguered city's oppressors, and an involved, conspiracy style-storyline means that nobody can truly be trusted. The ending, which builds to one final bout with the enemy, is predictable in the extreme but nonetheless crowd-pleasing and hugely entertaining.Yen sleepwalks through his role a bit, having played this type of character loads over the years, but he's given strong support in the likes of established names such as Shawn Yue, Anthony Wong and Shu Qi. The fast-paced story is handled well by Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs, who brings the same kind of twisty, gritty vitality to this story as he did with that hugely influential cops vs. gangsters movie. And, of course, there are lots and lots of scenes of Yen kicking ass as only he knows how, including a spectacular opening that celebrates the little-known Chinese role in WW1.

I bought "Legend of the Fist" from Amazon simply because Shu Qi was in it. But prior to that, then I had no idea what the movie was about, so it was without any hopes or expectations that I sat down to watch the movie."Legend of the Fist" was actually a rather good enough action/martial arts movie spiced up with a fairly good storyline as well. Set during World War I in a Japanese occupied Shanghai, we follow the oppression of the Chinese and their rise to rebel against the Japanese. Mostly by the hands on a single man; Chen Zhen.The action sequences and fight scenes in the movie were really great, nicely choreographed and executed, which is a trademark of Donnie Yen. So if you are familiar with his work, then you know you are in for some great action and lots of adrenaline here. However, the last fight was a bit too cliché for my liking, it was like an old Bruce Lee movie. You had Donnie Yen taking on a whole dojo of Japanese singlehandedly. Then he comes up against the 'villain', the main bad guy, and gets a nasty beating, but of course he comes back and beats the villain to a pulp. It was exactly like the old Bruce Lee movies, and it has been done too many times already, been there, done that. So it was sort of a anti-climatic end to the movie - as you saw it coming a mile away."Legend of the Fist" has some pretty good actors and actresses on the cast list; you have Donnie Yen (in the lead role of Chen Zhen), Shu Qi (playing Kiki) and Anthony Wong (playing Liu Yutian). And the people in the movie did great jobs in bringing their characters to life on the screen.Having seen "Legend of the Fist" now, I sit here with the taste of 'was this a tribute to Bruce Lee' in my mouth. Because everything in this movie screamed Bruce Lee, and it seemed like a movie that might as well have starred the immortal Bruce Lee and not Donnie Yen. And I will not even go into the similarity between the Masked Fighter and Bruce Lee's Kato character... But regardless of this being the case or not, then "Legend of the Fist" was actually good entertainment both story-wise and also action-wise.

If you're used to old-school chop-socky kung fu movies, you're in for a surprise with this film. Perhaps it's just my ignorance or my poor choice of martial arts films, but this movie has awakened me to how movies in China can be made. This film is thoroughly modern.This move is epic and modernly made. It tells a story based on Chinese history, which is kinda the norm for martial arts movies from China, but on a somewhat grand scale and it works. While there are NOT a lot of fight scenes, there is a lot of story presented through exceptional photography of very beautiful and realistic looking sets/locations.I highly recommend this movie for fans of martial arts that also want some story that doesn't involve two competing kung fu schools. It honestly reminded my of "The Last Emperor", which totally caught me off guard.

There is only one reason to see this movie and that is Donnie Yen. It is just an amazing sight to see this master of martial arts in action. Andrew Lau however must be ashamed for trying to be so political and patriotic. Nothing wrong with nationalistic movies once in a while. But lately it has been overkill. And he is clearly over his head here since he barely makes sense of what actually is happening on the screen. Worse you won't even care apart from the obvious cruelties displayed in movies like this. It is such a shame that the focus seems to be on the plot that is hardly interesting. Luckily for Andrew Lau Donnie manages to save it all by himself but you can't but wonder what the movie would have been like if the plot was kept simple.