Fist of Legend
(1994)
Chinese Title: 精武英雄
Translation: Ching Woo Hero
Starring: Jet Li, Chin Siu-Ho, Yasuaki
Kurata, Shinobu Nakamura, Billy Chow, Paul Chun Pui, Ada Choi, Yuen Cheung-Yan
Director: Gordon Chan
Action Directors: Yuen Woo-Ping, Yuen Shun-Yee, Yuen Cheung-Yan, Ku
Huen-Chiu
To their credit, writers Yip Kwong-Kim (The Tai Chi Master and Tiger Cage II), Lam Kee-To (A Chinese Ghost Story II and The Bride With White Hair) and Gordon Chan, who also directed, had a couple of tricks up their collective sleeves. The first of said tricks was to treat the film as a remake of Fist of Fury in its general story beats, but allow the details that flesh out the story to transform Fist of Legend into a stealth follow-up to Lau Kar-Leung’s tour de force Heroes of the East. An analysis of that would require a separate essay. The second new approach was to use the fight choreography to tell a fictional tale of the evolution of Bruce Lee’s martial philosophy. In other words, why does the fictional character of Chen Zhen anachonistically fight, using Bruce Lee’s style of jeet kune do? This film attempts to answer that exact question through its unique fight scenes.
We are introduced to Chen Zhen at a university in Kyoto, Japan, where he studies engineering. He is confronted by a local school of karate students, who try to bully him off the premises and out of Japan. When he insists on ignoring their threats, Chen Zhen finds himself being attacked on all sides. Using chin na, or joint locks, he proceeds to best his opponents, dislocating arms, feet and jaws; breaking limbs; and simply tossing the karate students around the room as if they were rag dolls. Now, there’s nothing new or revolutionary about chin na, which refers to a set of techniques and an actual style. There are numerous styles that have incorporated these techniques into their curriculum, including Fukian white crane kung fu, Hung Gar and praying mantis kung fu. In fact, chin na techniques are an essential part of Ying Jao Pai, or Eagle’s Claw, which is a part of the Northern Wushu curriculum that Jet Li studied.
Chen Zhen’s next fight comes several scenes later, in which he enters the Noguchi Arena on Japanese territory in Shanghai and challenges the entire dojo before squaring off with their sensei, or teacher, Akutagawa Ryuichi (played by Jackson Lou). The fight against the karateka, or karate students, has Jet Li unleashing a barrage of simple, but powerful kicks and punches against them. Once more, there’s nothing new or different about the moves he uses: said strikes would make up the more basic curriculum of many Chinese styles, the mastery of which would be necessary before moving on to more complex forms and techniques.
When Chen Zhen fights Ryuichi, he insists on using the Huo Fist style, which he learned from his master, the very real historical figure Huo Yuanjia. The reasoning within the story is logical: if I can defeat you using the same style my master used when he lost to you, than something fishy must be going on. When we consider the next few fights, however, Jet Li and his action directors, led by Yuen Woo-Ping[1], seem to be saying, “Yes, sticking to classic forms and styles is all well and good when fighting opponents who are vastly inferior to you.”
Bruce Lee had questioned the validity of traditional kung fu forms back in the 1960s when he invented his own fighting system, jeet kune do. In some ways, jeet kune do represented the original mixed martial arts, or MMA, combining aspects of wing chun from Bruce’s original training with elements of other Eastern martial arts, including Japanese judo, and Western combat systems, including fencing. To summarize the system in the crudest way possible, Bruce taught both an economy of movement and practicality that would end a street fight as quick as possible. The debate whether or not traditional Chinese kung fu styles carry any sort of real-world value has continued to the present day, exemplified on social media by videos of Chinese MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong challenging masters of wing chun and taiqi quan and beating them in a matter of seconds.
This brings us back to the question of whether or not traditional Chinese martial arts—or East Asian martial arts in general—are of any practical use. Obviously, a person with some sort of martial arts training, complete with a knowledge of blocks, holds, and takedowns, may hold an advantage over an untrained individual of a similar weight and build, whether or not his moves be flowery or not. For anecdotal evidence, the author recalls discussing martial arts once with an adult from his church who had studied hung gar during his youth. On a few occasions, he found himself in the middle of a fight, all of which he won[2]. Moreover, the author has a cousin who had became a black belt in tae kwon do as a young teen. Not too long afterward, he was the subject of bullying by some high school jock-types, who tried to push him around. In the resuting scuffle, the cousin broke one of the bully’s knees with a well-placed kick. To bring things back around, ““Yes, sticking to classic forms and styles is all well and good when fighting opponents who are vastly inferior to you, but when your opponent is your equal or better...”
This brings us to Chen Zhen’s third fight, which is against Huo Ting’En (played by Chin Siu-Ho), his master’s son and the new head of the Jing Wu School where Chen Zhen had learned kung fu. The events in the film leading up to this fight are irrelevant for the conversation, so we can focus on the duel itself. Both men had grown up learning the same kung fu style, both men had shown great aptitude for martial arts, and for the most part are equally matched in terms of height, weight, build, age and martial experience. In the script, the main difference between the two is that it’s implied Huo Ting’En has had some training in a second style, the Mi-Tsung Style, which is completely restricted to members of the Huo family.
Both men start the fight using the Huo Fist style, of which both are masters. Ting’En uses classical movements, from low stances to more complex hand-based strikes, and for the first part of the fight, is arguably better than Chen Zhen. But this is where the Bruce Lee jeet kune do philosophy comes in. Dialog from earlier in the film suggests that Chen Zhen picked up some kicks native to karate while studying in Japan. Moreover, we can infer that Chen Zhen picked up elements of Western boxing, and he starts doing some foot shuffling that Bruce Lee did in films like Way of the Dragon, which was inspired by Mohammed Ali. His punches also switch over to jabs and body blows from the more flowery movements that Ting’En is still using. From this point on, the fight belongs to Chen Zhen, whose boxing stance gives him greater flexibility than the low, rigid stances that characterizes Ting’En’s style. So like Bruce Lee and jeet kune do, Jet Li’s interpretation of Chen Zhen has filled in some of the gaps of his classical training with elements of Japanese karate and Western boxing, which is enough to exploit the weaknesses inherent in classical kung fu, personified by Huo Ting’En.
Nonetheless, Chen Zhen’s fighting style—founded on kung fu and complemented by karate and boxing—is still not complete. In the third act of the film, Chen Zhen is challenged to a duel by Fumio Funakoshi, the foremost karate expert in Japan (played by Yasuaki Kurata). Their duel is iconic mainly for the second half of the fight, where Fumio is blinded by a sudden sandstorm and Chen Zhen insists on both of them using blindfolds to even out the score. However, early on in the fight, Funakoshi notices Chen’s foot shuffling and asks what style he’s using. In the original international dub, Chen’s reply is for Fumio to “watch and learn.” Funakoshi nods and starts shuffling his feet, too! He also starts using some of Chen’s moves, which apparently also contained elements of muay thai, including clinching, knee smashes and elbow strikes. The fight is more or less a draw, although Funakoshi is nominally the winner, for getting Chen with a surprise throat lock at the very end.
In the brief conversation that follows, Funakoshi explains that he was able to win because he was able to adapt Chen’s fighting style to his own. To quote Bruce Lee, “be like water,” or in other words, adaptable to any situation. Funakoshi saw early on that Chen Zhen’s skill was every bit a match for his own karate, so the best thing to do would be to blindside Chen by attacking him with his own techniques. He didn’t waste valuable time and energy—one doesn’t have that luxury in the middle of a fight—trying to decide what technique or sequence of techniques in his own repertoire could break Chen’s style. Instead, he simply fought fire with fire. This will turn out to be valuable lesson for Chen Zhen at the climax.
That final fight turns out to be between Chen Zhen and General Fujita Goh, played by Billy Chow. General Fujita is described by Fumio Funakoshi as being the best fighter in the Japanese military, whose nickname among his cohorts is “the killing machine.” Funakoshi admits that Fujita is more powerful than he is, even if he lacks the basic ethics of a dignified warrior. Moreover, Fujita is built like a mountain, is more than a head taller than Chen Zhen, and is stronger both in technique and sheer brute force. In other words, even Chen Zhen’s hybrid fighting style may find itself severely lacking.
The fight goes about how you would expect: Chen Zhen unleashes a barrage of boxing-style punches and a plethora of kicks, including a flip kick and a whirlwind kick, where he spins horizontally in the air and uses the momentum to swing his leg in an downward arc on his opponent. However, none of these moves so much as make a dent in Fujita. The general, however, nearly kicks Chen Zhen unconscious and later dislocates his shoulder with a single punch. It is only after Chen Zhen starts to imitate Fujita’s fighting style that he’s able to ferret out its weakness, which he exploits to maximum advantage. The fight then ends with an homage to Bruce Lee and the original Fist of Fury, where he counters Fujita’s katana blade with his belt, which he uses a makeshift nuchaku.
Yuen Woo-Ping and his companions able to depict the evolution of Bruce Lee’s own philosophy through this step-by-step progression of five increasingly-difficult fights. Thus, they are able to demonstrate the Little Dragon’s philosophy in visual and thematic terms that the viewer can pick up on over the course of multiple viewings—viewers may spend the initial viewings “oohing” and “ahhing” over the superior choreography, painful hits and occasionally flashy moves on display. Few martial arts films carry as much thematic resonance to their fights as this film does, and fewer are able to tell a story through its fights. Fist of Legend does both with aplomb.
[1] - It should be pointed out
that Yuen Woo-Ping had worked on two “Brucesploitation” films prior to this: Bruce
Lee and I (1976) and Tower of Death (1981). Also on his team were
Yuen Cheung-Yan, Yuen Shun-Yee, and Ku Huen-Chiu. The former also worked on
some Brucesploitation, namely Dynamo (1978). Both Tower of Death and
Dynamo are considered to be among the pinnacles of Brucesploitation
films.
[2] - I should note here that the
individual in question said he won the fights, but sustained permanent damage
to his elbows as a result. Whether said damage came as a result of blocking or
striking was not made clear.
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