Following the life story of the great Huo Youninja, the Chinese martial arts master, who faces many challenges and hardships through his life, as he lost his family after killing his master, the thing that leads him to leave his own country, shocked till he meets a group of kindhearted women, who help him to regain his faith, till his fame and celebrity.
Every so often there is a hand-to-hand fight scene to cut the boredom -- the best is set atop a precipitously high wooden tower in a village square -- but even these don't set themselves apart from anything we've seen before.
Part bio-pic, part wuxia, Fearless melds the best of both genres and in the process makes something greater than the sum of its parts, commenting both on its genre and human nature in general, both as they are now and what they could aspire to be.
A movie that condemns the tendency of global culture to intrude everywhere while embracing the very things that kick multiplex doors down around the world.
More of a message movie designed for mainland China than a karate chopsocky for consumption in the West where a martial arts movie has to be about butt-kicking to generate any traction.
