Like so many international film stars (and filmmakers) before him, Jet Li came to America looking to conquer Hollywood but found that his best work remained the movies he made back home. He hit our shores in 1998 as the sole bright spot in Lethal Weapon 4 before heading up some films of varying quality including Romeo Must Die, Kiss of the Dragon and the woefully underseen Danny the Dog (aka Unleashed). Nine years later though and he was apparently done making movies on this side of the pond (aside from supporting roles in Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables trilogy). Unsurprisingly his best film in that period was the Chinese production of Hero. Li’s worked steadily back in China since then averaging up to two films per year, but aside from the Stallone flicks they’ve all been period pieces. That’s set to change this summer with the release of Badges of Fury, and while normally I’d be thrilled at the thought of Li in a contemporary setting again the film’s trailer has given me reason to pause. Check out the questionably funny and fury-less trailer below.

I’ve railed before about the over-abundance of period martial arts films and the lack of their modern-day counterparts especially when it comes to truly talented screen fighters like Donnie Yen and Jet Li. It looks like that drought is coming to an end though thanks to the recent announcement that Yen has wrapped production on a film called Special Identity. And now the news gets even better. Li is in post-production on Badges of Fury from director Wang Zi Ming, and the icing on the ass-kickery-flavored cake is that he’s joined by Wu Jing and Collin Chou in the tale of detectives hot on the trail of a serial killer. Like Yen and even Jackie Chan, Li has been on a period kick making movies set in long ago times celebrating Chinese history and whatnot. Kiss of the Dragon and Danny the Dog (aka Unleashed) are his last really good ones, but they’re eight to twelve years old. Li and Chou have faced off before in The Bodyguard from Beijing, and while it featured some wire work the final fight between them is pretty sweet. (Check it out here.) Equally impressive are Wu’s fight skills on display most notably in the phenomenal alley fight against Yen in SPL. (Watch it here.) The plot line for Badges of Fury (previously known as The One Cop) is as follows: