One of the best Jet Li's movies in Hong-Kong
My Father Is A Hero is one of the few Jet Li Lian-Jie movies in which you can see him really human. Forget the ethically spotless roles like Wong-Fei-Hung, and make room for more interesting and undertone character like Fong Sai-Yuk. By the way,
MFIAH was the last collaboration of Jet with Wong Jing who supported him aftern his clash with Tsui Hark on the Once Upon A Time In China saga. Clash which will end just after My Father Is A Hero, with the disputed Black Mask.
Jet Li is a Beijing Cop and beats up some local small potatoe while making sure to be on time to his son's kung-fu competition.
Because besides being a cop, Jet Li is a father here, and that, is pretty rare. He smokes cigarettes, he plays with his son, he tries to be on his dying wife sides despite a absorbing job,etc...The kind of things that we don't find much in Jet's movies, too often unimpeachable.
Right from the beginning, he receives an undercover mission into a mainlland robbers group striking in Hong-Kong and to to do that, plans a fake jailbreak, chance that one of the gangsters will take to escape and later ask Jet (as planned) if he wants to join them in HK. This gangster, Uncle Darkie is brilliantly played by Blacky Ko Sau-Leung who, despite a usual comic tone, hides a rightness which'll bond him to Jet. Anita Mui-Yim Fong, in a Hong-Kongese cop role who investigates all the way to China, the identity of the presumed robber (Jet), is comfortable as usual, even though she's been better. Jet Li's son
is played by the young but very impressive Tze Miu, who already played his son in New Legend Of Shaolin. This little brat shows us in the first minutes a Wu Shu demo followed by a fight which'll leave you dazed ; and slips great into this rejected and withdrawn kid role. Nevertheless, every roles doesn't have this deepness, Yu Rong-Guang (Iron Monkey) proves this to us as he plays the bad-very-bad guy of the film, although with some great martial skills that he's well-known to have.
Fights are, as usual, greatly choreographed by Corey Yuen Kwai who offers himself a cameo in a tactless barman role. Speaking about fights, the only thing I'll told you about the final one, is that Jet Li and his son makes a deadly coombo.
In Brief, surrounded by "old" co-workers like Wong Jing or Yuen Kwai, this movie place Jet in some scenes and even mor generally, a story quite atypical when you look into his filmography. Which makes of My Father Is A Hero one of the best Jet Li's movies of this HK/90's period.