According to Jet Li, “Jet Li’s Fearless” is the most personal and important martial arts movie of his entire career. It’s also supposed to be his last, commenting in a recent interview I conducted with him that this one, “says everything I ever wanted to say.”

Well, it certainly does say quite a bit. In many ways this is the celebrated action star’s most emotional picture, its themes in regards to the sport of martial arts about as genuine and heartfelt as any I’ve ever seen. It’s an intoxicating blend of spiritualism and action, an invigorating movie that makes you want to stand up and cheer.

Of course, having the best fight scenes in recent cinematic memory probably doesn’t hurt. This may be about a man who discovers that the true power of being a great martial artist is in not fighting, all the same the thing a person is going to remember most vividly walking out of the theater are the gloriously hyperkinetic fisticuffs.

Yet for all the beauteous brutality the soul of “Jet Li’s Fearless” is blissfully nonviolent. Concerning the life and times of renowned Chinese legend and hero Huo Yuanjia (Li), the famed fighter becomes a national hero at the turn of the Twentieth Century for defeating champions from four imperialist powers. But his real triumph was not again Britain, Japan, Spain and Belgium, but instead the founding of the Jingwu Sports Federation, Huo believing the future of martial arts – and China for that matter – lay in sportsmanship, brotherhood and friendship and not in the vicious carnality which had driven things for so long.

Director Ronny Yu (“The Bride with White Hair,” “Freddy vs. Jason”) embraces this philosophy. The early parts of the picture are a sequence of successively violent and narcissistic bouts featuring Huo as he pridefully competes to become the greatest fighter in his home province of Tianjin. Confusing popularity with victory the fighter willfully takes on all comers, callously dispatching them to the winds while childhood friend and local businessman Nong Jinsun (Dong Yong) looks on in sad disgust.

Things change dramatically after Huo kills another local master in an ill-advised contest. Worse, in retaliation the fighter’s mother and young daughter are bloodily murdered, the heartbroken martial artist heading into the Chinese wilderness wallowing in his grief. Huo is rescued by a small group of villagers who clean him up and put him to work in their rice fields. From them, and namely thanks to a kindly young blind woman named Moon (Sun Li), he learns to find peace and tranquility in life’s simplest pleasures. Huo learns being a martial arts master isn’t about how many people you hurt but how many people you help, and to that end he redirects his life hoping to help the people of China in any way he can.

It is here that Yu suddenly downshifts the film’s momentum, the picture becoming as quiet and introspective as the hero at its core. While more spectacular fights do occur, including the breathtaking final multinational showdown which made Huo a legend, these contests are of an entirely different stripe. Pride is replaced by modesty, brutality by compassion, and through it all the fabled martial artist showcases the beliefs and moves which have become a staple of his sport ever since.

And yet, there is a warmed-over familiarity to much of this that is very difficult to shake. As laudable as the film is, on certain levels I felt like I’d seen much of this many times before. Recent historical epics like “Hero,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “House of Flying Daggers” have raised the bar for the genre so incredibly high matching even a smidgen of their opulent brilliance is an almost impossible task.

It doesn’t help that Yu tends to be his own worst enemy. “Jet Li’s Fearless” has a choppiness to it that’s rather annoying. More than once I found myself enthralled by a scene only to have the rug completely thrown out from under me by a jagged cut. More than likely this is a result of the American distributor editing out over twenty minutes. But even then Yu stages things with an arch theatricality that’s almost annoying, and if it wasn’t for the brilliance unleashed by the fight sequences my interest in this probably would have dropped to nil.

But those fights are brilliant, all of Li's astonishing abilities on parade in full vitriolic force. Better, once the film slows down and Huo starts to become more introspective the actor really taps into the graceful elegance of the character. In fact, some of his later scenes with both Yong and Japanese actor Nakamura Shido border on the fantastic, the emotions fuelling his final bout with the latter absolutely electrifying. Both actors are phenomenal during this sequence, Shido’s last scene facing down one of his superiors surprisingly powerful and poignant especially considering the benign clichés inherent in the dialogue.

It is the action which will bring audiences to this picture, of course, and on that front they will not be disappointed. But the heart of “Jet Li’s Fearless” is in the belief that the art of combat should not lie in fighting but in not fighting, and that is where this epic truly soars. Huo looked at martial arts as a sport to be practiced by everyone. More so, he looked at all kinds of sport, not just the ones he practiced, as wondrous with peace of body, mind and soul a natural companion of participation.

Almost 100 years later and with a world continually swirling into chaos, there is wisdom to be found in beliefs such as these. If this is indeed Li’s last martial arts production, if this is all he wanted to say on the subject, he’s certainly done us all a service and gone out by making a very good one. Better, he’s gotten us to think about a world far beyond the confines of our own borders, are own beliefs, and to look at it with fresh eyes scanning for a way to make a difference. That’s not just good, it’s great, and “Jet Li’s Fearless” is all the better because of it.