Here’s a nice surprise, just something I found at the video store that I never heard of before, sounded interesting from the description on the box and it turned out it was. BESOURO is another movie based on the life of a legendary martial artist, except not an Asian one. This is a Brazilian film about a capoeira fighter.
The movie takes place in 1924. A narrator tells us that it’s less than 40 years after slavery ended in Brazil, that Africans are still treated like shit, that their religions and the practice of capoeira are outlawed. The setting is a small settlement where mostly African-Brazilians live, but they work in the sugar cane fields for an asshole white Colonel who uses the n-word more than 50 Cent does (played by Michael Richards [no, not really, but wouldn’t that be weird though?]). (read the rest of this shit…)
LEGEND OF THE FIST: THE RETURN OF CHEN ZHEN is the latest in Hong Kong’s prestigious line of FIST movies. If you’re not familiar with the saga it’s very simple: Chen Zhen is a vengeful kung fu master who was played by Bruce Lee in FIST OF FURY (1976), Jet Li in FIST OF LEGEND (1994), Donnie Yen in the FIST OF LEGEND tv series (1995), and Donnie Yen again in this movie based on his tv series adapted from Bruce Lee’s movie because of the popularity of Jet Li’s movie. The fictional Chen Zhen is supposed to be a student of the historical Huo Yuanjia, who was played by Jet Li in FEARLESS (2006). So keep in mind while watching that movie that Jet Li is playing teacher to himself and Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen, who of course played teacher to Bruce Lee in IP MAN 1-2. The Bruce Lee movie FISTS OF FURY is not related to these movies, that’s just another name for THE BIG BOSS. The Chen Zhen movies are only singular FIST and not plural FISTS. Also Chen Zhen is not related to the historical figure from the Han Dynasty, he is instead portrayed as living in the Republican era before the Second Sino-Japanese War although Huo Yuanjia lived during the late Qing Dynasty. So you see there is nothing to be confused about here. 
A few years ago when I wrote about 
Ever since the runaway Hong-Kong-equivalent-of-best-picture-Oscar success of the Donnie-Yen-starring biopic 
aka CHALLENGE OF THE NINJA, SHAOLIN VS. NINJA, SHAOLIN CHALLENGES NINJA
This year’s TRUE LEGEND is Yuen Woo-Ping’s first directational work since IRON MONKEY 2 in 1996. During that break he’s done some classic fight choreography, including some of the best ever in American movies (the MATRIXes, the KILL BILLs), but just hasn’t put himself in charge of a whole movie. So this is fun because it’s great wushu mythmaking and the master’s trademark fights working with a new pack of stylistic and technological weapons that didn’t exist 14 years ago. 
CHOKE is an early mixed martial arts documentary, released in ’99 and directed by one Rob Goodman. They don’t call it “mixed martial arts” or “MMA,” they seem to like “no rules fighting,” even though the movie makes it clear that there are rules, and even shows people arguing over what the rules should be. It focuses on the 1995 Vale Tudo tournament, a Japanese freestyle fighting competition similar to Ultimate Fighting Championship except in a ring instead of an octagon. It has ropes instead of walls and is a totally different shape although the number 8 is divisible by 4, in my opinion. 
I’m starting to think the underground fighting movie is to modern DTV what the western was to b-movies in the ’50s. They just never stop coming and yet somehow they’re not all terrible, in fact a few of them are great. You got BLOOD AND BONE of course, you got UNDISPUTED II-III (unless you consider prison fighting a separate genre), DAMAGE with Stone Cold Steve Austin was surprisingly good, and there’s even a good theatrically released one, FIGHTING. I’d recommend all of those above PIT FIGHTER, but I’ll be damned, here’s another pretty enjoyable and distinctively different take on this same type of storyline. 
You know how it is when you’re a young woman playing drums in a band but you see your boyfriend with another girl at your show so you flip out and get kicked out of the band and you’re depressed anyway because your dad is dead and your mom left town for months so you get real drunk and some guys in a parking lot try to kidnap you but some other dude takes you from them and you get chased by guys hopping around on bladed pogo-stick goat-leg stilts and you pass out and wake up with some dudes hanging out in a warehouse and it seems like this is their home but it turns out they brought you with them when they broke in here to rescue girls from the human traffickers who tried to take you. 
