Overview: Almost five years after breaking all Hong Kong box office records with the instant classic Fist of Fury, his last collaboration with the late Bruce Lee, director Lo Wei got to work on a sequel.

It would be the first major leading role for Lo’s latest discovery, a young actor who had been a stuntman on the original film but would soon be as massive a star as Lee. His name: Jackie Chan.

Considered to be one of the few “official” sequels to a Bruce Lee film, and now freshly restored in two different versions, New Fist of Fury is the first spark that would eventually lead Jackie Chan to becoming the worldwide star he is today!

Blu-ray Verdict: Shanghai, 1910. With the Jing Wu martial arts school in shambles and pressure from the Japanese armies to suppress a Chinese uprising after Chen Zhen’s martyrdom, Chen’s fiancée Li Er (Nora Miao, reprising her role from Fist of Fury) escapes to Japanese-occupied Taiwan to hide at her grandfather’s school.

Despite her attempts to lay low, she runs afoul of karate master Okimura (Chan Sing, The Iron-Fisted Monk), who plans to take over all of the Chinese-run schools in Taiwan. Amidst all of this, a young aimless thief, known only as Ah Long (Jackie Chan), befriends Li Er after unknowingly stealing the nunchaku once yielded by the late Chen.

Will he give into his fears, or will he learn the martial arts of Jing Wu and fight alongside Li Er against the Japanese?

In this old-school Kung Fu flick, Jackie Chan takes over where Bruce Lee left off. He’s a tough street punk who gets into lots of brawls, but doesn’t have any technique to defend himself. I know, it’s hard to believe, but nevertheless oh-so true.

One day, he gets into a fight with an entire gang of bad guys, and unfortunately he doesn’t have the Chan-tastic moves we all know he has. He’s brutally beaten, only nursed back to health by a brother and sister who find him buried in an open grave. They run a martial arts school, and eventually, Jackie agrees to learn what they’re teaching.

You’re going to have to love old 1970’s Chinese movies to enjoy this one, of that I can attest to, for it is highly stylized, actually more noticeably so than the lacking production values (but then again, who cares about scenery when Chan and company are high-kicking themselves around the screen?!).

And dubious, at times, silly sound effects aside, if you want to see an extremely young Jackie Chan, one not adept to his craft yet, one not anywhere close to the Hollywood stage, and one vigorously intent on showcasing just exactly what he can do from the off, you’ll find him here; in all his masterful glory.

And although he is not the lead, by any stretch of the imagination, the main focus of the film being the brother-sister duo who want to follow in their grandfather’s footsteps, Chan does still manage to stick out and become noticed very quickly.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
• New 2K restoration from the original negatives by Fortune Star
• High Definition (1080p) Bluray transfers of the 120-min Original Theatrical Cut and the 82-min 1980 Re-release Cut
• Original Mandarin and English lossless mono audio for the Theatrical Cut, plus newly uncovered alternate Mandarin and Cantonese mono audio
• Original Cantonese and English lossless mono audio for the Re-Release Cut
• Newly translated optional English subtitles
• New feature commentary on the Theatrical Cut by martial arts cinema experts Frank Djeng & Michael Worth, co-producers of Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee
• New feature commentary on the Re-Release Cut by action cinema expert Brandon Bentley
• New Fist, Part Two Fist, a new video essay by Bentley comparing New Fist of Fury to the rival sequel made simultaneously, Fist of Fury Part II
• Trailer gallery, including a Chen Zhen trailer reel of sequels and reboots
• Image gallery
• Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Jonathan Clements and an archival retrospective article by Brian Bankston

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