If you want to know about Hou Yuan Jia, go read one of his biographies or do a search on the Internet. Chances are, you'll find out more about the man there than "Fearless" ever will. How can it when what little expositions there are between the fight scenes barely illuminate his actions on screen let alone his entire life? But then again, who watches a movie starring Jet Li for the expositions?

If fights scenes are all you're after, "Fearless" suffices, but you've seen Jet Li in better form. While well choreographed and gritty, the fights lack the joy of his older movies like those in "Once Upon a Time in China" or "Fist of Legend" because it's hard to cheer him on when you know he's fighting for purely selfish reasons.


Ronnie Yu (left) goes over the script with Jet

Jet Li stars as martial arts master Hou Yuan Jia whose father wants him to hit the books as a child, but he wants to follow in his father's footsteps instead. He secretly watches his father practice and performs the moves himself when he ought to be studying.

As a kid, he witnessed his father's defeat at the hands of a lesser fighter because his father held back. After the fight, he is gloated into challenging the victor's son and is defeated. He vows to never let anyone defeat him ever again.

Most of his adult life is spent trying to best all fighters at the expense of everything else. He is on the verge of bankruptcy, but what does that matters when he's undefeated? Family? An inconvenient detail. His best friend since childhood? Inconsequential.

His pride finally gets the best of him when he challenges and kills another martial arts master. In retaliation, his family is killed, including his daughter. Devastated, he ends up working in a remote village working as a farmer. We know from other movies the powerful restorative nature of rice fields and the countryside. With the help of his benefactors, including a blind young woman, he sees the error of his ways.

Enlighten, he travels back to his hometown to pay respect to the deceased. Hold on, not so fast. When he sees his people insulted in a newspaper headline by one of the imperial powers occupying China at the time, his nationalistic pride is inflamed. What does he do? Why, fight, of course.

There's also this small detail about him founding the Jingwu Sports Federation. The movie doesn't exactly go into detail why this Federation is important and what influences it has on the course of China's history. What matters are the fights, right?