The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk Review

• 20th Sep 2010

Jet Li stars in one of what I would call his ‘bread and butter’ roles in this typical Golden Harvest yarn, originally released in 1993 but re-released now on DVD by Cine Asia.

The Legend… is set late in China’s Ching dynasty. Westerners have started to influence life in the East through its tourism to the Canton area thus affecting the culture; yet evil emperors still exist, thus so do revolutionaries wanting to overthrow Mandarin tyranny. Fong Sai Yuk (Li) is a youngster about to make his way in the world but just happens to be also a great martial artist. This leads to trouble when he catches the eye of the local governor’s daughter and fights a bunch of heavy handed suitors for her honour. This in turn alerts said governor, who happens to be in the employ of said evil emperor. From this, the story unfolds which will change the fate of the Fong family and in turn transform Fong Sai Yuk himself into a national folk icon by becoming a leading member of the resistance movement of which the emperor wants to eradicate at all costs.

This is not a biopic of any sorts. There appears to be no actual proof that Fong Sai Yuk ever existed but nevertheless, he remains a legend in Cantonese culture and this sets the scene for the film makers to let loose and have fun with the narrative and indeed they do. The film carries itself like a lot of martial arts folk tales do, entailing high drama, mixed with humour and breathtaking martial arts set-pieces. Sometimes this can be a bit of an assault on the viewers’ senses and we’re left watching something of little artistic quality other than the marvelling at the athletic ability of the actors.

With The Legend… we actually have a rather nice package which does not at all stray from traditional production values of Hong Kong martial arts movies but in fact delivers some quality in how the film pans out. Pay no real attention to the acting, this is mediocre at best; it just about gets the narrative across without annoying the viewer too much but the comedy involved in the film is actually of a fairly high standard and will make one genuinely titter here and there with both slapstick and more witty dialogue. The storyline itself is plausible too and the plot pans out in a melodramatic, theatrical but acceptable way. Obviously, the main attraction in any martial arts movie is the martial arts scenes themselves but it is not only Li that excels in this movie, making it less of a showboating exercise for him and more of an ensemble piece that will entertain any fan of classic martial arts cinema.

The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk is not a masterpiece however. This is because Jet Li has starred in some absolute knockout movies before and after this one. There is no real feeling of this film being the epic feat that Once Upon a Time in China or Fist of Legend and the more recent Fearless are and remain today. This is why I dubbed it as a ‘bread and butter’ movie of the genre. Nevertheless, I still recommend a watch of this movie and any self respecting collector of the genre will be happy with this title in their library.

Extras on the disc come in usual format with trailers and little else really but Cine Asia DVDs are always very well presented. I do however wish that distributors would release 5.1 audio versions of both the dubbed and original language versions of movies. In this instance the original language has only been mixed in 2.0 stereo and me being a purist and wanting to see movies in their native tongue, a 5.1 mix wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk was released on 6th September 2010 on DVD.

Dan Beadle