Hello again. Ni hao. Konichiwa. An Nyoung. Welcome back. So I have spent a great deal of time this summer in deep meditation (and by deep meditation, I mean slacking on my blog). But now I’m back. And in honor of my triumphant return, I would like to tell you about my personal favorite movie in the kung fu genre, Jet Li’s Fist of Legend.

Jet Li pays homage to Bruce Lee through this remake of The Chinese Connection (1972). Though the plot is different (you should watch both) the premise is the same. In 1937 Japanese occupied Shanghai, the master of the Jing Wu school has been killed. Chen Zen (Jet Li) returns from boarding school in Japan to sort through the mystery behind his master’s death. We meet Chen Zhen in class in his Japanese boarding school as the local Kendo club invades the classroom to force the Chinese to leave. This film does a nice job of highlighting the racial tensions of the occupation. A sweet fight scene ensues in which Chen Zhen disables all of the kendo players and provides a physiology lesson by dislocating a variety of joints in each of his opponents. This just sets the tone for the rest of the movie. All of the fight scenes are epic, the characters are interesting and well developed, and there is even a (tolerable) love story so you can watch it with your significant other.

Jet pays his respects to Bruce in a few other ways as well. We see hints of Lee’s fighting style, especially in the final fight scene, Jet discusses some of Bruce’s fighting philosophy in his fight with Funakoshi, and he even does the cool back-flip kick popularized by Bruce.

All in all, this is just a great movie. It was released in 1994, before Jet Li gained a lot of popularity in the US, so it is not really well known, but if you like kung fu movies (and if you are reading this, you likely do) you should watch this movie. You’ll love it.

“That’s right, I’m Chen Zhen…the best.”