THE JET LI COLLECTION – Shout! Review: Not As Legendary, But Still A Plentiful Fistful

● FONG SAI YUK
● FONG SAI YUK 2
● TAI CHI MASTER
● THE BODYGUARD FROM BEIJING
● FIST OF LEGEND
● Conclusion

Actor Jet Li’s Hollywood crossover to the West in the 1990s was garnered with warm reception just under thirty years ago with the release of Lethal Weapon 4, with the actor and wushu wunderkind inaugurating his stardom with lighting-fast fervor, and meeting the demand of a market that aptly took notice by then with the likes of Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh. Par for the course was a home video arena hungry to capitalize off of the popularity of these stars, namely Li, thus ensuing the mass refurbishing and repackaging of a multitude of Hong Kong actioners featuring the star himself by the new millennium.

Granted, these films made money at the rental and retail VHS outlets, and adjusted themselves nicely with the birth of the DVD benefiting companies like Buena Vista Home Distribution which retained the rights to a number of these titles, making all the requisite adjustments to appeal to an American home video base of kung fu cinema fans, thus dubbing these releases as “American Dubs”. Of course, this didn’t entirely dispel the availability of these films in their original local prints and presentations, something that home media boutiques have also worked to rectify in acquiring these films and selling these films once they were able to nab the rights, with consumers like me frequenting websites such as HKFlix, YesAsia, eThaiCD, and YesAsia for our fix.

Over the years though, plenty of these titles went “Out Of Print” while specialty labels have proven to be a beacon for genre fans eager to re-up their ownership of these films on Blu-Ray, or even 4K UHD if possible. The stewards at Shout! Studios, namely, have taken notice in this regard, putting Hong Kong action fans on notice having ensnared a pool of over a hundred classic titles, including scores of celebrated hit action thrillers, for its library. Surely enough, this makes at least five current titles starring Jet Li ripe for the taking with The Jet Li Collection which already has pre-orders available for its release on July 29 as of this post.

The collection encompasses five titles spotlighting frontman Li’s on-screen fruition between 1993 to 1994 as star, as well as producer via his Eastern Productions Ltd label, having already established himself firmly with nine starring roles with Tsui Hark’s 1991 martial arts franchise exposition, Once Upon A Time In China. For this, The Jet Li Collection also touts the recurrences of martial arts cinema stars like Vincent Zhou, the late Ji Chunhua, Chin Siu-Ho, Collin Chou and Billy Chow to name a few, along with auteurs Yuen Woo-Ping (Tai Chi Master, Fist Of Legend), and the late Corey Yuen Kwai (Fong Sai Yuk, Fong Sai Yuk 2, The Bodyguard From Beijing), topping off an already favorable bundle to start.

FONG SAI YUK

Fong’s rambunctious and youthful exploits are full display in Corey Yuen’s 1993 action adventure, Fong Sai Yuk (dub-titled as The Legend for its release to US audiences at the turn of the millennium), as Fong chases Ting Ting Lui (Michelle Reis), the daughter of hooligan Tiger Lui (Chen Sung-Young), looking to curry favor with the locals through a kung fu competition, prizing the winner with his daughter’s hand in marriage. Meanwhile, Fong’s father, Fong Tak (Paul Chu) is an influential figure among the Manchus and locals, often resorting to archaic methods of disciplining his wife, Miu Tsui-fa (Josephine Siao), and son when things go array.

As Fong and Miu get wrapped up in Fong’s competitive hijinks, the stakes are soon raised when the two find that Fong Tak is a member of the Red Lotus Society, a secret organization aimed at overthrowing the tyrannical Qing empire and restoring the Han dynasty to its rule. Little do they know, however, that Tiger Lui’s hobnobbing has brought the families too close for comfort, and into the sights of a vicious Manchu Governor (Zhou) who is looking to take down the Red Lotus Society, and anyone else who stands in his way.

Fong Sai Yuk is a rousing, epic kung fu comedy with high-end action set pieces that heavily bolster Hong Kong productions of their time. Li is an absolute star in these films with a skillset that readily meets the demand of its script, and fight scene spectacle by Corey Yuen Kwai that lend equally to the prospective talents of its other stars, including Sibelle Hu who plays Ting-Ting’s puglistic mother, Siu-Wan, and Siao who presents depth and multiple dimensions to her performance as Miu, along with the additional appearance of screen star Adam Cheng as famed folk hero and Jin Yong brainchild, Chan Ka Lok.

This movie was also one of the first I’d seen co-star Zhou in many years ago before finally catching up with the likes of The Blacksheep Affair (firstly known to me as Another Meltdown delivered by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment shamelessly packaged as sequel to another Li starrer) and Aman Chang’s Fist Power. Captured on screen by Jingle Ma’s nimble cinematography, there’s no question the amount of effort by Li and Zhao as hero and villain, put forth to bookend this first chapter of Fong Sai Yuk’s escapist thrills and mythos for Hong Kong and martial arts moviegoers.

EXTRAS: Shout! presents “A Legendary Achievement: Leon Hunt On A Jet Li Classic” runs about twenty minutes with the author of “Kung Fu Cult Masters” (2003) And “East Asian Cinemas” (2008) exploring the folkloric hero’s colorful history in cinema, spotlighting Li’s iteration as more – and essentially – comedically centric. Additionally, among other topics, Hunt also talks about how crucial Li’s career succession was with Tsui Hark’s inspired profile of Wong Fei-Hung in the Once Upon A Time In China series, when pairing Li’s nascency in the 80s to how it performed against that of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and their ilk.

The disc rounds things out with a classic Hong Kong trailer for the movie.

FONG SAI YUK 2

Yuen Kwai and Li reunite this time together on screen for the explosive sequel that now sees our titular hero and his wife, Ting-Ting, as a member of the Red Lotus Society, headed by the aforementioned Chan Ka-Lok (Cheng). The revered Fong, at once thwarted in his efforts to prove himself before the Society in holding its abusive and maniacal deputy Yu (Ji) accountable, finds himself thrust in a bitter rivalry for who should succeed Chan.

A chance for Fong to earn his place finds him on a team heist mission to seize and recover a secret package from a convoy of ronin en route to a Qing viceroy whose daughter, Suen Si-Ngai (Amy Kwok) forces Fong to marry her in exchange for the box. Forced to tussle between a hairbrained polyamourous marriage with Ting-Ting and Si-Ngai at odds with one another, Fong is also left to reconcile with the consequences of his failure to retrieve the box. The resulting fallout soon leaves the fate of the Society hanging in the balance with the power-hungry Yu at the forefront of a vicious uprising, with Fong’s mother in captivity, and his son on his most dangerous mission yet.

Bookending with classic Yuen Kwai spectacle, Fong Sai Yuk contributes more of the same with higher stakes for our storied characters. Li and Ji share two action sequences featuring their signature wire-fu feats, with Reis and Kwok also getting in on some of the action and zany comedy midway of the film. Li and Siao, and co-star Ji lead the way for a grand finale sprinkled rightly with Li and Siao’s signature pairing as mother and son.

EXTRAS: If there was ever a time you wanted to learn more about what made the American Dubs tick, Shout! has you covered with “We Dare To Dub,” a seventeen-minute interview lot with Steven Avila and Trip Brock. The two talk about how they discovered Jet Li and the heyday of their business ventures with Dimension Films at the time, and the process of revampimg Jet Li’s films for American audiences using less-expedient technology at the time. Some of the chatter here is giggle-worthy, including when one of them mentioned having themselves along with other staff members play VO extra and background characters.

The disc also delivers a classic Hong Kong trailer for the movie.

TAI CHI MASTER

Acclaimed action master Yuen Woo-Ping takes the reins for a story led by Li and the aforementioned Chin in the respective roles of Junbao and Tianbao, childhood friends in the Shaolin monastery who grow up together. Tianbao nearly kills a fellow monk during a challenge, pitting the two friends in an epic clash with their fellow monks and the master until they’re expelled, and forced to learn and fend for themselves in the outside world. Struggling to make ends meet, the two are joined by a beautiful pickpocket named Little Melon (Fennie Yuen), a wandering sanxian player named Siu Lin (Michelle Yeoh), and an eccentric Reverend (Yuen Chung-Yan) in their daily travails.

Eager to kowtow to authority and advance his station in life, however, Tianbao soon parts ways, leaving Junbao with his newfound friends to survive and strategize around tyrannical Eunuch, Liu Jin (Sun Jian-kui), who has grown more than weary with the uptick in rebellion growing in his midst. Little do Junbao and his friends know that betrayal is abound in a story that will surely test his mettle, forging him into a warrior who can finally take on Liu Jin’s forces, leading up to a decisive battle with the man who used to he his brother in Shaolin.

Written by Kim Yip, Tai Chi Master rests its narrative on time honored themes pertinent to the fragile nature of friendships and how easily they can teeter into bitter rivalry through personal ambition. Chin is fantastic in this regard opposite Li, leading up to the film’s climactic showdown, which would prove to be the first of more memorable screen tête-a-têtes to come with Yuen at the wheel.

A core aspect of this film pertains to something one of the Abbots gives to Tianbao as a recommendation for when he finds him losing his way. Instead, it’s Junbao’s discovery and subsequent use of it on which the film’s foundation is built, amplifying Tai Chi as a fantastical framework for Yuen’s style of action direction. When paired with other international genre offshoots like Kickboxer, The Perfect Weapon, Shunichi Nagasaki’s Kuro Obi and even Yuen’s Wing Chun, Tai Chi Master sits among some of the best of the best in escapist, style-centric martial arts action cinema.

EXTRAS: Coming in hot for Shout! Studios’ exclusive release is “Tai Chi Madam – The Michelle Yeoh Effect,” a forty seven-minute career retrospective of Yeoh’s career. Leon Hunt and film critic and author David West sit in for their own segments as well as actress and martial arts star Cynthia Rothrock (Millionaires Express, Yes, Madam!) with a lookback on her memorable experiences working with Yeoh, and author Ric Meyers lending his insight along with handy quotables from Yeoh herself.

Archival segments include “Nemesis,” a twenty-minute interview with co-headliner Chin Siu-Ho, as well as “The Birthplace Of Tai Chi” in which viewers are given a tour of Chen Village with a look at the origins of Chen-style Tai Chi and its various evolutions, along with illustrious mural and stele art permeating the martial art and its history. We also get to spend some extra minutes in a Tai Chi studio and watch a few brief demos by select students.

Completing the disc’s contents are a pair of video essays featuring film critic Elvis Mitchell and filmmaker Brett Ratner: “Meditations On the Master” in which they celebrate and reflect on Yuen Woo-Ping, his style of action and legacy, and “Twin Warriors” with focus on Li and Yeoh, and their careers; followed by an English language version of the film’s opening credits, and a classic Hong Kong trailer for the movie.

THE BODYGUARD FROM BEIJING

Corey Yuen Kwai’s 1994 reunion with Jet Li sees a script from duo Chan Kin-Chung and Gordon Chan, which finds Hui Ching-Yeung (Li) a Chinese soldier and professional bodyguard hired to protect the last of three witnesses to a heinous murder at the hands of notorious mobsters.

With her wealthy businessman boyfriend overseas at work, Michelle (Christy Chung) is forced to cope with her new bodyguard’s stringent methods, ultimately putting the two at odds with one another. Nevertheless, the job is the job, and Hui, no matter the odds, puts Michelle first, a work ethic that soon makes him the target of Wong Kin-Kwan (Collin Chou), a former soldier-cum-mercenary when Hui eliminates a goon hired by one of Michelle’s would-be assassins, pitting (ahem!) “the defender” in a battle of wits, weapons and warfare, against a killer with nothing to lose.

As the only modern action film in The Jet Li Collection, it feels like a necessary pick for Shout! to include this as it certainly sheds some light on the scope of Li’s roles, here as a rigid buzzcut Chinese patriot who is always on his toes. The cheese of the film – the incumbent romantic subtexts between Hui and Michelle, akin to Mick Jackson’s Warner Bros. storied treatment popularized by Kevin Costner and the late Whitney Houston – isn’t a major centerpiece of the film, though it’s an entertaining little addendum and point of development for a role that certainly takes our protagonist out of his comfort zone; There are certainly echoes of this in Romeo Must Die with Li and the late Aaliyah, which does bode nicely for the timing of this film’s crossover release via Dimension the same year.

It’s an inviting change of pace from the period stuff as well, giving Li a gun to top off his fully-stacked arsenal of skills, and a worthy antagonist in Chou following Wong Jing’s Kung Fu Cult Master in 1993, and before several more screen credits together, including Ronny Yu’s Fearless. Actor Kent Cheng lends to the film with the amiable role of Fat Po, with William Chu in the role of Michelle’s irksome nephew, Billy, whose reckless curiosity with guns brings him a little too close for comfort.

EXTRAS: The only other feature on this disc apart from James Mudge’s commentary track is an eighteen-minute interview with screenwriter Gordon Chan. In it, he talks about his admiration for Corey Yuen Kwai, and getting on board to work with Li for his production company for two films. Among other things, he also talked about how he locked himself in his hotel room for about ten days to complete the script for The Bodyguard From Beijing, and how happy the producers were with it.

The disc concludes with a classic Hong Kong trailer for the movie.

FIST OF LEGEND

Fifth and far from least is Yuen Woo-Ping’s masterful 1994 release, rejoining Jet Li and Chin Siu-Ho, along with Yasuaki Kurata, and Billy Chow. A remake of Fists Of Fury, Gordon Chan directs from a script he wrote along with Lam Kee-to and Kim Yip, circling around with the classic tale of Chen Zhen (Li) a student whose martial arts proficiency and loyalty to his people are put to the test following the death of his revered master, Huo Yuanjia.

Suspicious of Huo’s death, a challenge to the Japanese martial arts school offsets an investigation that entrenches him further into upheaval, particularly with matters pertinent to his romantic partnership with Mitsuko, the daughter of an affable and respected sensei. Chen’s arrival to his old master’s school also marks a tumultuous shift in who will succeed as the master to the Jing Wu academy, pitting brother against brother in a story that soon reveals the shocking details behind the conspiracy of Huo’s death, and the maniacal Japanese general (Billy Chow) behind it all, culminating with the end-all-be-all of mano-a-mano martial arts showdowns.

Fist Of Legend is certainly one for the ages. I don’t know what the gossip was at the time, but I can’t imagine there was a lot of protest over this film being made, particularly given how salable it is among Western demographics to enrage moviegoers with a redo of “part of someone’s childhood”. If there was any pearl-clutching otherwise, I’m curious to know and am open to learn about. At least as of this write up, however, there’s no way you’ll come across martial arts fandoms of the past thirty years or more without the mention of Chan’s 1994 hit.

This movie is action-packed, refreshingly well made in its revival of Lo Wei’s 1972 thriller starring Bruce Lee, and a guaranteed must-own in any capacity – preferably this one.

EXTRAS: The Fist Of Legend Blu-Ray delivers perhaps one of the biggest hauls of extras I’ve ever seen for this film. Included, first off, is a new interview continuing from the previous disc with director Gordon Chan dives in with a fistful of stories from the set in “A Fistful Of Ambition” in which he talks creating Jet Li’s iconic reiteration for an upgraded take on Bruce Lee’s pre-existing role, crafting the action through grueling and challenging conditions, and casting the necessary roles to name a few. There’s a few laughs here folks will take from it, including when Chan cusses while re-enacting moments with the crew as stunts are being performed, and he also talks about the film’s reception in the years ahead, including in France, and much more.

For “Connecting Blows,” University of Edinburgh professor and Asian Studies academic, Aaron Moore, lays the groundwork for a comprehensive deliniation of Fist Of Legend in terms of the history and logistics of its era. He talks about the blending of cultures between Qing Dynasty, modern British and Japanese imperial aesthetics, particularly regarding the wartime setting. He also discusses the film’s tone and messaging, acknowledging the complexities between Chinese and Japanese characters, and this interview goes on for roughly nineteen minutes.

The remainder of goodies on this disc include archival interviews and segments imported from the pre-existing Dragon Dynasty print of the film’s Two-Disc Ultimate Edition released in 2008, beginning with “The Man Behind The Legend” for a throwback interview with the director. Following that is twenty three-minute interview with co-star Chin Siu-Ho who tells of his martial arts upbringing, his matriculation into screenfighting and eventually getting involved with Chang Cheh, as well as his approach to acting and the grueling demands of stuntwork.

The next is a back-to-back offering of Yasuaki Kurata, firstly with “The Way Of The Warrior,” in which the actor takes us down memory lane with his martial arts credentials and how he landed his first Hong Kong movie role in The Angry Guest, and his reception as a screen villain and possible protagonist going forward. He also talks about meeting Bruce Lee for the first time, and working briefly on Japanese TV before launching his own action academy in the 1970s, and then getting lined-up for a three-picture deal with Sammo Hung upon meeting the man himself, as well as his other fellow “little fortunes” Jackie and Biao, among other topics; Following that is “The School Of Hard Knocks,” a twenty six-minute featurette with a look inside the training regimen and styling of the Kurata Action Club which the action club.

Next up is “A Look At Fist Of Legend,” a nine-minute video essay with speaking segments between film critic Elvis Mitchell and filmmaker Brett Ratner, followed by a six minute reel of deleted footage. For the reel, a caption at the top of the NG reel informs viewers that while the intended Japanese dialogue for these scenes were salvaged, the Chinese audio for the others could only be shown in Mandarin audio via a Taiwanese print and a standard definition digital source, since original film elements couldn’t be traced. The disc is concluded with an original Hong Kong trailer.

CONCLUSION

Fong Sai Yuk and Fong Sai Yuk 2 solely come with Cantonese tracks, which is surprising since these versions also come with the American Dub on some digital and streaming platforms, including Tubi which started rolling out these films earlier in the month. Oddly, Tai Chi Master, The Bodyguard From Beijing, and Fist Of Legend are the only films that come with both Cantonese AND English options; The latter presents two Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (one with Alternate Music Cues And Dubbing), as well as both the 5.1 American Dub and the DTS-HD English Export track, which is kind of like having four different versions of the same movie.

The Tai Chi Master disc comes with the second-most extras in the bundle. All the extras are pretty cool, and contribute to a worthy effort by Shout! to put together a sizable collection celebrating some of Jet Li’s earlier work. James Mudge runs across all ten discs for his commentaries on each film, and while I didn’t get to completely listen the commentaries due to my own time constraints, I imagine folks with more time will be able to take something from his insight. His commentary is the only other feature available on both the Blu-Ray and 4K UHDs, so that’s pretty cool. It also comes with a limited edition poster for consumers.

The Jet Li Collection has its shortcomings for at least three-fifths of this collection, but don’t let this dissuade you too much from owning this quintet.