Besides, it is just a movie- I doubt that his actual fights/battles looked any better, or even as good as the footage from one of the average bullshido throwdowns. I said it before, and I’ll say it again- check the Kung Fu vs Kung Fu video, if you want to see what Kung Fu Masters look like in action.
I was just googling this guy, and its a shame their aren’t more concrete historical facts on his exploits.
I wonder why his family were upset and Jet Li’s otrayal of his life.
Well for one thing if the movie was true, his descendants wouldn’t exist. The movie shows his only child dying as a little girl and him not re-marrying or having any more children.
I’d be a bit annoyed if somebody made a movie about my grandfather and it showed him dying childless.
It made him look like a self aggrandizing jerk until he comes to his sense, when, in reality, he started the first public martial arts school, in an attempt to improve the health and fitness of the new Republic of China. Most of the story is just conjured up stuff, from what I understand, and there is a short bio in Robert Smith’s “Chinese Masters and Methods’”.
To add to the Huo Yuanjia film list, there’s a great Yuen Wo Ping film called Legend of a Fighter, starring the great Leung Kar-yan. I tried to get my wife into kung fu flicks by subjecting her to a Huo Yuanjia movie marathon.
She still doesn’t like kung fu films.
Also, and I’m amazed no one has pointed this out, but Benny “The Jet” Urquidez and Jet Li are two different people!
Seen it! Kind of an odd movie- Huo learns Kung Fu from a Japanese spy, basically, and, spies on his dad to learn the secret of his dad’s power, which seems to be the ability to do some ghey finger twists. on another note, Chen Zhen was, from what little there is, one of his students, but from what I read ( don’t know how reliable these sources are…) he was basically a trouble maker, and had a very stormy relationship with the school, and there was not anything “heroic” about him. Who knows, right? The shootout at the OK corral turns out to be just a dust up between to gangs of scumbags, and once everyone who knew the truth died, Wyatt Earp told people in magazines and Hollywood, how he cleaned up the west…