“New Fist Of Fury” serves as a very loose sequel to Bruce Lee’s “Fist Of Fury”. The film stars a rather young Jackie Chan (“Police Story”, “Armour Of God”) but unfortunately, this was at the time when the studio was pushing for him to Lee’s successor. It was not until films such as “Drunken Master” that Chan clearly established himself as different from Lee.

In this film, a young Taiwanese thief (Chan) is always committing acts of mischief. However, he summons the courage to learn martial arts so that he can oppose Taiwan’s Japanese occupiers. It all builds to a violent final showdown between the Chinese kung fu schools and the powerful Japanese kung fu school.

Jackie Chan does not actually appear in as much of this film as you might hope. A lot of the scenes focus on other characters and as a result, you might be a little disappointed by the low number of fight scenes involving Chan. His signature comedic action is not really present here. Pretty much everybody in this movie fights at some point and while some of their skills are impressive, it’s nothing that I have not seen in countless other martial arts flicks.

“New Fist Of Fury” is a pretty generic martial arts movie. The fight choreography is fine and there is no problem with the story as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it but it just never excited me. If you want a Bruce Lee movie then go and watch a Bruce Lee film but if you want to see a Jackie Chan movie then watch one that features his trademark blend of action and comedy. There are plenty of other similar films from Chan from the same era such as “Drunken Master”, “Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow”, “Spiritual Kung Fu” and “Dragon Lord” that are all superior.