Legend of Chenzhen (2019)

"Dying is easy, surviving is hard" Getting through this movie was harder

Fist of Legend (2019) aka Legend of Chenzhen aka Fist of Legend/II was a prequel of sorts to Jet Li’s Fist of Legend from 1994. This was a cheaply and poorly made movie that would have looked out of place in 1994.

Chen Zhen is in Japan as a student to learn about the enemy so that he can go home and help protect China. He falls for Mitsuko whose uncle is the virtuous president of the Black Dragon Society. Also interested in Mitsuko is the vile Black Dragon VP Chiyo Shinobu. Chiyo is in cahoots with evil military Col. Fujita. They are looking to bring down the Black Mask who has made fools of their samurai on the streets and they think it is Chen Zhen. Chen Zhen has been ordered to keep his head low which he accomplishes until Chiyo goes too far.

This movie lacked any spirit to it and was filled with problems. Chen Zhen was given zero personality. Huang Wei Ting as Mitsuko tried to double up her energy level to replace his. One of the problems with non-Japanese playing Japanese is that they don’t know how to walk in kimonos and as someone who has watched my share of Japanese movies, it comes across as awkward. Xu Shao Hang was a handsome if heartless Chiyo. There were “Americans” who looked anything but. The military uniforms appeared to be more Russian or German than US. You know a movie is desperate when it contains not one, but two sexual assaults and a repeat of one of those. The dubbing was awful, the green screens obvious, and the music played loudly over the dialogue on several occasions.

It’s a kung fu film, so maybe the fights were good. Unfortunately, most of the fights were awful and relied on quite a bit of wire work. The trained samurai were nice enough to come at Chen Zhen one at a time and not know how to swing their swords while samurai in the background just waved theirs around in the air. The fight choreography was abysmal for a 2019 production. It’s too bad because Tiger Xu moved well enough to handle better fight scenes. And story-wise, why would Chen Zhen wait until what appeared to be midday to rescue his girl after he knew she’d been kidnapped that night? Good job there hero.

Fist of Legend was populated with pretty people but lacked in everything that would make a film interesting. Even at 77 minutes it felt overly long. Plus, it might cause eye strain for all the times you'll feel like rolling your eyes at the ridiculous scenarios and terrible fight scenes. This film is just watchable, especially if you aren’t familiar with martial arts movies or have a need to watch all the movies about the fictional character Chen Zhen. There are better movies about the Black Masked warrior out there.

2 March 2024

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