MAN WITH THE GOLDEN FIST

'I DON'T REALLY like to watch action films these days,' says Donnie Yen Ji-dan. 'I'll keep on picking at what's on screen. I'll look at them from a technical point of view, and I don't really get entertained by doing this.' He sighs - and it's not because of how his job as one of Hong Kong's best known actors has stripped him of the thrill of a night at the movies. He was pained, he says, by the mediocrity he sees dominating today's martial arts films.

'Maybe it's me having a tinted view of everything, but there's just nothing new on offer,' he says. 'What stimulates me now are either really quiet, cerebral films, like [Steven Spielberg's] Munich, for example - because it articulates a story well and is very dramatic. Or else, I go for movies that really go to extremes in the action sequences.'

True to his reputation of being one of the most hard-hitting fighters in the industry, the 42-year-old Yen has no problems placing himself as a descendant of Hong Kong's kung fu royalty, to which he sees there are no worthy heirs.

'Kung fu heroes are products of the times. There's Jackie Chan and the Seven Little Fortunes [a group tutored by martial art master Yu Jim-yuen that also includes Sammo Hung Kam-bo and Yuen Wah], and then [Jet] Li Lianjie who started out as a wushu champion. And there's me with my lineage in martial arts,' says Yen, referring to the legacy of his mother Bow Sim Mark, who since 1972 has run the well-known Chinese Wushu Research Institute in Boston, where the mainland-born Yen grew up and trained before returning to Hong Kong in the early 1980s.

'I came into the business when it was at its highest point - and only competition could breed progress,' he says. Yen is confident that he's triumphed in the race towards the top. When speaking about his feelings towards Zhang Yimou's visually ravishing epic Hero, he shrugs and says coolly how his 'small involvement' - in a stylishly shot fight with Li - is the film's crowning moment: 'It's obvious to audiences that other than my scene with Jet, the other stuff is not really as good on the eye,' he says.

When asked whether he harboured any ambitions when he entered show business - via a brief spell studying martial arts in Beijing in his teens - he says no, however, 'I never would have imagined how big an influence I would be on kung fu movies'.