Jet Li's Fearless ***

Billed as Jet Li's final kung-fu epic, Jet Li's Fearless purports to tell the story of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese martial artist master in the late 1800s/early 1900s who helped inspire Chinese national pride in the face of Western colonialism. This film is really two movies. The first half is the kind of kung-fu movie you'd expect, replete with physics-defying moves and battles. But the second half is more of a period piece; there is very little martial arts action, save for the final climactic scene, and those fights are firmly grounded in reality.

The film is shot well and has some great set pieces. The plot is pretty standard -- hero's head gets too big, hero loses everything, hero goes off to find his way, humbled hero returns to set things right. Much of this plot is what dominates the martial-arts-free second half of the movie. In fact, it reminded me a lot of The Last Samurai (the Tom Cruise vehicle from a couple of years ago), where the hero ends up in a misty mountain village, find love, learns a new path, and goes off to fight the Western powers.

Still, Fearless is an entertaining film in its own right and is worth watching. I would have given this 3 1/2 stars, but I penalized it the 1/2 star for two reasons. First, the final scene is surprisingly overly cheesy. And second, they end the film with text giving the historical update of what happened after Yuanjia's death. In other words, this was based on a true story. But when my curiosity lead me to Google Yuanjia after I saw the film, I found out that very little in this "true" film was true. I know films will over-dramaticize elements in biopics, but I thought this was ridiculous. For one thing, Yuanjia's great-grandsons for some reason dispute the film's assertion that his only child was killed in her youth. The slaughter of his family in the film is a very important plot point ... and completely made up. So too are the circumstances of his death as portrayed in the film. And who knows what else. I don't object to them making up facts out of nowhere for a film, but if you're gonna do that, don't put historical facts up at the end of your film and pretend your film is accurate too.

But if you can get past my nitpicks and just enjoy the film as a completely fictional kung-fu period piece, you'll enjoy Jet Li's Fearless.