Movies I love more than anyone else: Shanghai Knights (2003).

This is the start of what may be a reoccurring feature of sorts, spotlighting the movies that aren't just my favorites, but films that I probably hold in higher esteem than anyone else out there in the critical community.  First up is a film that celebrates its tenth-anniversary this very day.  I'm speaking not of How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days (which I don't loathe), but rather the wonderful period-set comedy adventure Shanghai Knights.  It is a movie that yes, I love probably more than any other critic on Earth.  It is one of the few movies that was so damn good and so bloody enjoyable that I intentionally saw it in a theater three times during its first month of theatrical play.  It is one of my favorite movies from the last fifteen years and I'd argue that it is a near-perfect version of what it's attempting to be.

See the best scene in Donnie Yen's Legend of the Fist: the Return of Chen Zhen

This doozie of an opening occurs about five minutes or so into the prologue of this Friday's limited release, Legend of the Fist. It's a Donnie Yen action vehicle, arguably operating as a sequel to Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury. When Yen isn't fighting people, the picture is pretty dull, although Andrew Lau deserves credit for going full-on nationalistic in this tale of 1920s-China being subjugated by the Japanese between the two World Wars. The story is pretty basic (Donnie Yen returns from war and dons the alias of a wealthy playboy and becomes a vigilante by night), but the telling isn't particularly inspiring. When Yen isn't kicking righteous ass (which isn't as often as you'd think) or we aren't being treated to hilariously violent montages of public officials being murdered, the film slows to a crawl. To be fair, the closing fight scene (where Yen takes on an entire dojo of baddies by himself) is pretty spectacular, but this opening bit is the best reason to see the picture. And since Well Go USA and/or Variance Films saw fit to put this sequence up online just days before the limited theatrical release, and Film School Rejects was nice enough to embed it. So they have saved you the trip to the theater. Legend of the Fist is not a terrible film. Yen is potent in a way that the less physically imposing Jet Li or the more comedic Jackie Chan never was (even Chan knew his better, as he let Yen kick his ass in the terrific Shanghai Knights back in 2003) and the production values are stylish. But it fails the primary test of a solid martial arts film: am I entertained when the fists and feet are not flying? Alas, the answer in this case is no.

Grade: C+