Gravity cannot hold down martial arts champion and film star Li Lian-jie, writes GILBERT WONG. Nor can a bad script.
Hackney, London, a rundown cinema in the winter of 1987. Outside there's only sleet under grey skies. Inside I'm uplifted by my first glimpse of the man now known as Jet Li.
The film is Shaolin Temple. Made in what used to be called the mainland (China, that is), it is not a masterpiece of cinema but richly deserves the cult status it now enjoys.
Its star, the unlikely named Jet, is mesmerising. He can contort and flip his body in midair, as if gravity was only a minor distraction. His martial ballet with a long staff against impossible odds recalls the epic scene in Enter the Dragon when Bruce Lee, nunchukus whirling, lays waste to Han's army.
I file him away under one to watch. Other snippets end up in the same place. Jet Li, real name Li Lian-jie, aged 37, is the real thing: a four-times national wushu champion of China.
In a country where wushu is the pre-eminent martial art, he was the top dog out of literally millions of practitioners. He was a champion when only a boy: a true prodigy. Imagine if Boris Becker had won Wimbledon at 12 instead of 18.
Aged 11, in 1974 he did his stuff on the White House lawn before Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger- part of the ping-pong diplomacy of the times.
I next see him in the series Once Upon a Time in China by director Tsui Hark (another name to watch for). Part homage to Sergio Leone, partly a necessary revision of turn-of-the-century Chinese history; Jet Li plays Wong Fei-hung, an historical figure who led the fight against the British opium trade.
The role embedded him in the collective consciousness of millions in Asia as a film star who combined the integrity and intelligence of a Harrison Ford or Gary Cooper with the kinetic excitement of Bruce Lee. Plus, he played a man who in Chinese terms had the mana of a Charles Upham.
Not bad for a short (1.69m), little (69kg) guy with a pockmarked face who hailed from a poor family in Beijing.
None of this should be taken to mean that his latest effort in Hollywood, Romeo Must Die, is a masterpiece or even very good. It isn't. If there was a creative vision behind the film it quickly developed cataracts.
Even so, Jet Li's persona shines through the dross. On screen he exudes integrity, and even when engaged in the kinetic violence we have come to see there is no sadism or joy in the pain he inflicts.
We can enjoy the sheer beauty and exhilaration of the fighter Jet, maiming and killing those who oppose him entirely without guilt. No wonder action producer Joel Silver loves him.
Jet Li - Fighter Jet
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