B. Camp Reviews

My Father is a Hero (1995)

Jet Li and Son Kick Butt (with help from Anita Mui)

[22 January 2000]

Interesting mix of family drama, crime thriller and kung fu as Jet Li plays a mainland Chinese cop going undercover to infiltrate a robbery gang in Hong Kong. His young son has been told his dad is a wanted criminal, but the son continues to have faith in him. When Jet's wife dies, a female HK cop (played by Anita Mui) enters the mix and brings the son to Hong Kong. While the plot is fairly engaging, it sometimes slows down the action, which is not as extensive here as it is in so many of Jet Li's Hong Kong films. However, the boy (played by Tze Miu) is a kung fu champ himself and contributes some clever fight scenes including a confrontation with taunting classmates. There's one mind-boggling action scene involving a garbage dump and a garbage truck, which finds Anita scurrying up a tall iron gate, shooting the truck driver as the truck barrels towards her, leaping from the top of the gate through the smashed windshield and into the passenger's seat, and commandeering the truck, all without a scratch. The big action finale takes place on a large yacht where an auction of illegal Chinese treasures is underway and Jet takes on all three bad guys, played by the formidable trio of Yu Rong Guang (IRON MONKEY), Ngai Sing (THE BODYGUARD FROM BEIJING, KUNG FU CULT MASTER), and Ken Lo (DRUNKEN MASTER II). Here Jet uses his son in a most ingenious (and impossible) manner to defeat the bad guys.

Fist of Legend (1994)

A Superior 1990s Kung Fu Movie

[22 January 2000]

This remake of the Bruce Lee movie, THE CHINESE CONNECTION (1973) is easily one of Jet Li's best and one of the last great kung fu films to come out of Hong Kong. (Many fans consider it far superior to the original, which is generally considered Bruce's best.) Jet stars as a Chinese kung fu student who is eventually forced into a showdown with a Japanese champ (played by Billy Chow) to avenge his master. As the film opens, Jet's a student in Japan and has a Japanese girlfriend (played by the beautiful Shinobu Nakayama, the star of the 1995 Japanese monster film GAMERA, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE). Back in China, Jet is made an outcast by his own community when he goes to live with the girlfriend. He is forced into a match with her relative, played by Yasuaki Kurata, who starred in many Shaw Bros. kung fu films of the 1970s and '80s, including CHALLENGE OF THE NINJA, which this film deliberately recalls. This particular scene has a powerful emotional subtext as an older fighting star squares off, in a spirit of great respect, against the new kung fu king on a grassy hilltop. The scene plays as a fond homage to Shaw Brothers. The whole film is beautifully shot and acted. If you like martial arts films, you must see this.