FEARLESS (Huo Yuan Jia) (DVD Rental Review) - 27/1/07

A typical trick from the DVD Producers in the Rental Sector is to leave off the Special Features; so if you really want them, you will go out and buy a copy after forking out £3.75p for a Rental. So with this version we get just the film and it is billed as Jet Li's swansong to his Martial Arts career in an historical tale of the legendary Huo Yuanjia who was a man struggling with his past at the turn of 20th Century China and it's quite a nice little piece. Starting off slowly and setting out it's wares with considerable skill it lays the groundwork for some amazing bone-crunching fight scene set pieces while at the same time giving an idyllic lustrous feel to the whole epic scope that it is attempting to paint out as a canvas of the period it is covering around 1910. With a certain amount of honour and a real flourish in conveying a changing of understanding from Jet Li's character portrayal you can't help feeling angry for the way business commerce and greed affected China at this time both culturally and politically. They say a picture paints a thousand words and this film strives to give meaning to this past with never a let up in it's hour and forty minutes or so running time and not a frame is wasted by the Director Ronny Yu in all it's box of erstwhile delights.