Japanese Master Fumio: “What style is that?”
Chen Zhen: “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”
From Fist of Legend

Fist of Legend was made in 1994, directed by Gordon Chan and featuring fight choreography by Yuen Woo-ping (of The Matrix fame), and produced by and starring Jet Li.  Its a remake Bruce Lee’s 1971 film Fist of Fury .

Many of the key elements of the fight scenes for The Matrix were lifted from this film.  In this fight, Jet fights veteran Japanese action star Kurata Yasuaki ( Eastern Condors ).  The cool thing about this movie fight (and this movie) is that the fighters discuss and analyze fighting strategies and techniques while they are fighting.

I wish I could clearly remember the details now but I saw this first on a VHS tape (badly) dubbed and subtitled.  Then later I saw the nice version released in the Hong Kong explosion to US video in the mid 2000s (after Jackie Chan became a star in the US). The discussions about fighting in this Fumio-Chen Zhen fight were different.  In one, they discuss timing and in the other they discussed angle – something like that.  Both discussions were informed .

In Fist of Legend , the lead character keeps learning to become a better and better fighter as the film goes on, learning from each fight, like Kenichi or almost like Groundhog Day ( one of my favorite films ) .