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Jet Li, unbeknownst to his adoring family,
is a secret agent for the Chinese government, and is sent to Hong
Kong to infiltrate a violent gang. Anita Mui is the tough Hong Kong
cop who has a run-in with Li, and travels to the mainland to investigate
his background. When Li's wife dies of an illness, Mui takes her
young son back to Hong Kong in search of his father.
Probably Jet Li's best attempt at transferring his skills to the
modern day genre. 'My Father is a Hero' is actually quite a dark
film with a few minor fight sequences until Jet really lets loose
in the finale. The storyline is above average for a Hong Kong movie
and Hui Miao playing Jet Li's son gives a fantastic performance.
He is given quite a large proportion of the screen-time and shows
a fantastic ability for both acting and fighting. The father/son
relationship between him and Jet is played out well and the 'True
Lies' style plot does justice to all involved. However, there are
a few problems which hinder the film from becoming Jet's best. Yu
Rong Kwong playing the main bad-guy looks the part and can certainly
fight but he has a tendancy to overact and comes across as being
simply a pantomime villian acting in a different film altogether.
Also, the end is a bit obvious and tries every trick in the book
to make the audience go away felling satisfied as well as being
a bit long. This said, this is a Jet film which every fan must have
in their collection. The cinematography really gives the film a
look of it's own and the epic end fight scene comprising of father
and son fighting together really gets the heart pumping.
Jet shows that he is indeed at home in the modern kung-fu film genre
with Anita Mui and Hui Miao giving terrific support in both the
acting and fighting departments. Little touches such as the use
of Madarin and Cantonese to give away Jet's cover (he is from the
mainland), go to show that film is more than simply a Kung-Fu movie
with it's eye on where the next fight scene is coming from.
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