娱乐英语新闻:Outside The Matrix

BEIJING, July?9 (Xinhuanet) -- Keanu Reeves' involvement with Chinese martial arts goes beyond the sci-fi trilogy that added punch to his career and is the force behind his directorial kickoff.

In the blockbuster The Matrix, Keanu Reeves declared: "I know kung fu".

He made the declaration after the martial art was virtually uploaded into his mind in the sci-fi hit.

But his directorial debut Man of Tai Chi suggests he actually has had ancient Chinese fighting styles on the brain for the six years since work started on the film.

The movie will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

It's a personal undertaking for the 48-year-old, who reunites with Matrix choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and Chen Hu, his kung fu trainer during the trilogy's creation.

The film's regular and IMAX versions are packed with Chinese tai chi and mixed martial arts.

Reeves plays the boss of an underground fighting club, who lures a young tai chi practitioner, played by Chen Hu, to fight and kill for money.

Reeves' action scenes are dense. He battles Chen in hand-to-hand combat in the final "super fight", as he calls it. He did most of the 10-minute sequence himself but called in stuntmen for some of the dangerous moves because he has a neck plate.

Chen is the film's biggest star and fights for much of the 100 minutes.

The 30-year-old from Sichuan province started training at age 8 and worked in many Hollywood movies as a choreographer, stuntman and trainer. He and Reeves became friends while training eight hours a day when making The Matrix.

Chen calls Reeves "the most hard-working and interested in Chinese culture among all star pupils". He told Reeves to watch Bruce Lee and Jet Li films every night and combine what he saw with what he was taught. The pandas, landscapes and food of Sichuan were frequent conversational topics. Reeves wrote the preface for Chen's 2005 autobiography.

"Perhaps we bonded because I tortured him more than others," Chen says, jokingly.

"It's difficult to describe how you establish friendships. You just feel connections when you talk about family and share jokes and perspectives."

Chen impressed Reeves with a story about his master. Chen says his teacher would use a handful of seeds to lure birds. He would collect the birds' chi when they ate from his hand and couldn't fly away.

The word chi appears frequently in the film.

Reeves regards it as a life force.