From there, Chen Zhen returns to Shanghai after the war, to find that despite China's involvement in the winning side of the war, Japan is being allowed to occupy Shanghai and the local police force is quite inadequate, lead by Huang Haolong (Bo Huang) and answering to a Frenchman, Vincent (Karl Dominik). Huang and his men made me think of "Keystone Cops" with their bumbling antics, while Vincent browbeats Huang and his men and is more interested in collecting bribe payoff money from them than serving the public.
Chen Zhen works with an underground military movement attempting to get China to unite and to repel the Japanese and, to facilitate this, he becomes partners with Liu Yutian (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), helping to run the Casablanca nightclub, the most popular nightclub in Shanghai in 1925, and a place commonly visited by spies and agents of the various governments interested in Shanghai, including the occupying Japanese forces and the Brits. There he meets love interest "KiKi" (Shu Qi), a showgirl at the Casablanca... but this party-girl has something to hide, and the Casablanca could prove to be more dangerous than Chen Zhen realized.
The Japanese forces are led by Colonel Chikaraishi (Ryu Kohata), who will disregard Tokyo's direct orders when he feels that he has a better handle on what Tokyo needs done in Shanghai. To this end, he sends his best operative with a team of men to attempt the assassination of a Chinese diplomat, General Zeng (Shawn Yue). Chen Zhen "borrows" a costume from the show window of a theater showing "Masked Warrior" (think "Kato" from The Green Hornet, but with shinier rubber-like fabric) and foils the assassination attempt, singlehandedly dispatching a dozen assailants or so, then drives the diplomat to safety. That's right... this just became a superhero movie.
As it turns out, the local leader of the Japanese army, Colonel Chikaraishi has a personal vendetta against Chen Zhen, outside of his actions as the Masked Warrior, and he is determined to have his revenge.
While certain elements of Legend of the Fist could be considered to be formulaic, this entire movie as a whole combines an interesting combination of these aspects into a story that crosses genres and refuses to be labeled or categorized with other movies. You get everything here, from romance to war history to spies to martial arts to superhero... And none of it felt overly contrived.
The Collectors' Edition includes a couple of special features on the Blu-ray and a second disc (DVD) with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. It was interesting to see Donnie Yen as he refines and works through fight sequences in the behind-the-scenes pieces. However, the interviews are in Mandarin (with English subtitles), so you'll be doing a lot of reading if you don't speak Mandarin. One thing that annoyed me a bit about the special features was that they would play one after the other, without having obvious indications that one special feature had ended and a new one had started. Essentially, if you select a special feature, the system behaves as if you are in "play all" mode, but starts with the special feature you selected.
If you can't watch a film that has "wire work" in it, then Legend of the Fist isn't for you. However, if you like superheroes, spies, martial arts and action films, then you've simply got to check this one out.
