A brilliant performer in the league of Bruce Lee, Chow Yun-Fat and Jackie Chan, Jet Li is one of the most respected figures in the genre of martial-arts cinema today. Born Li Lian Jie, Jet Li came into the world on April 26th, 1963 in Heibei, Beijing, China. He was the youngest of five siblings, and his father having died when he was but two, he had an increasingly protective mother. His mother’s strict parenting produced a boy too timid to risk learning the bicycle till his teens. It was in an ironic twist that his mother enrolled him one summer, when he was a boy of eight, in a school today known as the Beijing Sports and Exercises School. As luck would have it, Li was sent to the wushu class, where he turned out to be quite a success and was asked to return at the end of the season. This boosted his confidence in himself, and under the expert supervision of coach Wu Bin, he acquired the nickname of “Jet” for his quicksilver moves.
He was selected the following year to perform at the opening ceremony of Pan-Asian-African-Latin American Table Tennis Championships, where he earned praise from the then premier Zhou Enlai. This was the first time he had left home, and he followed it up with a rigorous training schedule under Bin. Two years later, in 1974, he entered the National Wushu Championships. Here he became the All-around Champion, impressing the judges with his skill at spear and swords. This gave him widespread fame as a child prodigy in martial arts, and he continued his strenuous routine at the special martial arts school, which he had been attending ever since he was nine.
He began to train with twenty of the finest young wushu exponents in China, and was sent the same year on a diplomatic mission to America, when China opened diplomatic relations with the country. Here he displayed his skill on the lawns of the White House for President Nixon. This was part of the program of his ongoing participation in state functions under which he was chosen to represent his country in front of foreign dignitaries. He won the All-China Youth Championships upon his return from America, and despite serious injuries, won the National Games the next year.
War is a 2007 action/thriller film, directed by Phillip G. Atwell who makes his film debut, with fight choreography by Corey Yuen. The film was released in North America on August 24, 2007, and was rated R by the MPAA for "sequences of strong bloody violence, sexuality/nudity and language". The film stars Jet Li and Jason Statham making their second collaboration after the 2001 film The One. Statham plays an FBI agent determined to take down a mysterious assassin known as Rogue (Li), after his partner is murdered.
