New Fist of Fury

Buy This Item New Fist of Fury by Simitar Ent.  Available from Amazon  $14.95  on 11-27-2008     This early film of Jackie Chan's was meant to shepherd him into the '70s kung fu genre pantheon made internationally popular by Bruce Lee. Indirectly it did, but probably more out of positioning than performance. Chan was to assume Lee's position as kung fu superstar, made evident by his role in <I>New Fist of Fury</I> (1976), the somewhat clunky chop-socky sequel to <I>The Chinese Connection</I> (on which Chan had worked as a stunt man). Directed by Wei Lo, <I>New Fist of Fury</I> picks up with two siblings fleeing a Japanese-occupied Shanghai for Taiwan, where their grandfather runs a Kung Fu school. However, a Japanese martial arts teacher has plans to run all the schools under his own name, eventually killing the grandfather. Chan plays a young thief who, at first, wants nothing to do with fighting but then finds his calling as the new leader of rebels against the Japanese occupation. Chan of course is no Bruce Lee (although during one dramatic sequence, a still of Lee is cut into the frame to "remind" viewers of the filmmakers' intentions) but <I>New Fist of Fury</I> marks Chan's first entry as a leading actor in Hong Kong action films. <I>--Shannon Gee</I> Reader Reviews I feel that many of the critics that rated New Fist of Fury as being horrible, a travesty of justice, Bruceploitation, and the like have flat out missed the point(especially, if they only watched the English dubbed version which makes this movie suck to death). I'm not going to bore everyone with storyline, plot, and character specifics...but think about it...while it may've been the intent to launch Jackie Chan into international stardom, what if the film's intent was to depict the succession of the Ching Wu school as opposed to the succession of Bruce Lee's character(Chen Jun) from the original Fist of Fury? Having watched this film for the first time in a decade, I found myself not only enjoying the memories, but the call to unity against oppression in the film(ie, the persecution of the Ching Wu school and other Chinese kung-fu schools)...which is why you don't see Jackie Chan out shining everyone else, it's more of a collaborative effort of his character AND the lesser known/unknown faces we see jumping in. If you look at it that way, I think you'll get the point and it won't turn your stomach to see him go from being a petty thied(getting his backside handed to him) to learning kung-fu and calling the people to unity against the "occupying power." If it WAS Bruceploitation at all, the finger should've been pointed at Lo Wei,not Jackie Chan, because he was trying to cash in on Bruce Lee's death with a sequel. But I see this effort as standing out because of it's philisophical value, much like Bruce Lee's Game of Death would've been had he lived to finish it. If you add this one to your collection, make sure it features Mandarin with English subtitles.

New Fist of Fury Available from Amazon Price: $14.95 Updated on 11-27-2008.

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