Heroes Review

Heroes Heroes (Fearless/Fearless Heroes or 大侠霍元甲) was a 45 episode Chinese drama that was broadcast between July and August 2020.

About

Most websites provide the following information about the show “The Refornment Movement of 1898 resulted in the “Six Heroes” dying. Huo Yuan Jia, who was filled with patriotic enthusiasm, had been eager to participate.”

I would say it’s about the main character’s role in the invasion of westerners and Japanese into China, plus the problems with the Chinese who collaborated with them, and how he and his family find their place in that society to help the people.

Cast

Vincent Zhao (趙文卓) plays Huo Yuan Jia
He is a popular actor and director who has had martial arts training, he has been in numerous other similar productions where he uses that skillset. It is like this show was made for him or had him in mind. He is a good actor but not the best in this show.

Mao Lin Lin (毛林林) plays Wang Yun Ying
She plays Huo Yan Jia’s wife very well, she is underrated in this show. She is a very popular actress signed up to numerous other productions, I counted 5 TV shows.

Ashton Chen (释小龙) plays Chen Zhen
He was listed in the “main cast” but only appeared in half of the series. Like Vincent and some other actors he also has some martial arts experience, and it shows. He moved to the US and studied at the Professional Children’s School in New York City. He looks very short but in fact, is the same height as me.

There were other great actors in this show, too many to list here.

Summary

This was a really great underrated TV series but it did have its flaws.

There were some bumps in the script but overall it was written quite well with very good life events happening to the family; hardships and good times. Some of the “compromises” were written well, you will know what I mean when you get to them in the series. Some central characters got knocked off early on or halfway into the series, including two of my favourites so I was a bit upset about that.

The best parts:

Martial arts scenes. This was definitely an action-orientated TV series and a lot of effort went into how they were choreographed, I don’t think I’ve seen so much of it in a Chinese drama before. The show is worth watching just because of these scenes.
Female Characters. These evolved during the show but eventually, equality ruled which was really good. I would have liked some more female martial artists in the show.
Production Quality. The cinematography, sets and directing was very well done. I had seen some of the sets before in other productions, such as the one used for Shanghai, but they were utilized well.

The worst parts:

Voiceovers of the westerners. Often it is difficult to tell if any of the actors use voice-over artists but for the westerners, it was embarrassingly obvious. Some Caucasians spoke in two languages, such as French in Chinese, there was a different voice over artist for each of the languages, they didn’t even sound like each other. It was painful. Most of the westerners were very annoying.
The students of the Master kept on crying when something went wrong. I just wanted to slap them.
Master Huo Yuan Jia was quite flawed and kept making silly mistakes, his wife was more intelligent. Maybe they wrote it that way on purpose.

Overall:

As I said, it was very good and well worth giving it a go. I give it 4.5/5.