New Fist of Fury (1976)

After the Jin Wu school in Shanghai is destroyed, surviving members travel to Taiwan to continue their struggle against Japanese oppression with the aid of a thief played by Jackie Chan.

Although Chan had his first leading role in The Little Tiger of Canton (1971) where he first met Lo Wei, it was this sequel to Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (1972) that awkwardly placed him on the rocky road to stardom. Too bad it’s a stinker.

The film picks up a short time after the end of Fist of Fury where Chen Jun (Bruce Lee) died a martyr. Since then, the Jin Wu school has been destroyed by the Japanese and Jun’s sister Ching Hua (Nora Miao) travels to Taiwan to join her grandfather in hopes of escaping the Japanese in Shanghai. Once she and her companions arrive, Jun’s nunchakus which had kept are stolen by Ah Lung (Jackie Chan), a petty local thief. Ching Hua later finds the prized possession by the roadside along with Lung who has been nearly beaten to death for refusing to join a kung fu school loyal to the Japanese. He’s nursed back to health and is invited to learn kung fu but refuses. That is until he sees a Japanese martial arts master played by Chan Sing publicly denounce Ching Hua’s new school. Lung takes up the school’s broken banner and joins them. Eventually, he’s forced to face Chan Sing and his formidable daughter after they attempt to force the local schools to all join them.

This film has one great distinction and it has nothing to do with being associated with Bruce Lee’s classic. New Fist of Fury was Jackie Chan’s first leading role as a martial arts star. For this reason, Lo Wei’s pronouncement that he discovered Jackie has some validity. Of course, Lo had no idea what to do with him. In this film, Lo tried to replicate the success of Fist of Fury which he also wrote and directed. Unfortunately, the only reason that film was a success sadly died in 1973, leaving Jackie to step into Bruce Lee’s shoes. Although he had worked on both Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon as a stuntman, he was not interested in being the next Bruce Lee. Lo had other plans and unwisely tried to cast Jackie as another angst-ridden fighter standing up for Chinese nationalism.

Lo’s story is typically heavy-handed and dripping with tiresome racial slurs and naive bias against Japanese. Nora Miao is certainly a charming actress but is unable to fulfill the burden of carrying the drama. Chan Sing, who is one of my favorite early seventies martial arts stars gets one standout scene when he’s attacked in a bath, but is otherwise miscast as a ruthless Japanese martial arts master. Miao and Chan Sing actually get more screen time than Jackie whose character gets the worst treatment. Jackie, who had yet to receive surgery to widen his eyes (a common practice in Asia), starts out in the familiar role of a happy-go-lucky youth with nothing but misbehavin’ on his mind. But he doesn’t know kung fu so his first fight with two Japanese men is more of a brawl. Later we get to see him stupidly thumb his nose at more Japanese and get another, more brutal beating. Throughout the majority of the film he’s off sulking or stomping around in mock defiance. Towards the end, he gets mad, learns kung fu in record time and fights one of his least interesting closing battles, but also one of the most violent.

What’s really sad about New Fist of Fury is that Jackie is trying like so many others before and after him to produce the same kind of intensity that only Bruce could do. Had Jackie not had his own unique ideas which he would finally get to fully try out in Half a Loaf of Kung Fu (1978), he probably would have been remembered solely as another Bruce Lee clone.