Starring: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Xiong Xin-Xin, Joe
Sayah, Chan Kwok-Bong, Patrick Lung Kong, Jeff Wolfe, Richard Ng
Director: Sammo Hung
Action Director: Sammo Hung, Cho Wing, Xiong Xin Xin
There are a few series of martial arts movies which have left an imprint on the genre, one that will be felt forever. One is Jackie Chan's Police Story series, which contain some of the best stunt/martial arts action sequences in the history of the genre. There's the The Matrix series, which popularlized the blend of Hong Kong martial arts choreography and CGI. One of the greatest series is the Once Upon a Time in China (hereafter referred to as "OUATIC") series.
The series has, up to this point, consisted of six movies, one prequel, one spin-off/parody, and several TV series. In addition, there have several knock-offs made following the success of the series. The OUATIC films are probably best known for kicking off the 1990s "wire-fu" craze and putting Jet Li into stardom. In addition to that, the movies (at least the first three) are evidence that martial arts movies can have great acting, music, storylines, etc. while still having excellent fight scenes.
The focal character of the series is Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung. Wong was a Chinese healer and kung fu expert during the late 19th century and early 20th century. His kung fu style was hung-gar, a style which was created by Hung Hey-Kwoon (a character that Jet Li has also played) and was based on the animal styles, especially the tiger and crane techniques. Wong was great martial artist; he had the nickname of "King of the Lions" due to his prowess in the Lion Dance. He also perfected a technique known as the "No-Shadow Kick," a kick so fast that you could not even see the shadow of the leg moving.
A lot of films have been made about Wong Fei-Hung. Most recently, Sammo Hung appeared in Jackie Chan's Around the World in 80 Days as Master Wong. The OUATIC movies were historical epics. They told of the perilous times and conflicts that China passed through during the era of Western colonization and the weakening of the Qing Dynasty. They were great examples of how Chinese filmmakers were masters of mixing genres: action, romance, comedy, drama, tragedy, and historical fiction. The films stand as testament to what a talented Chinese director is capable of doing.
The first two films are generally considered the best of the series and the third doesn't lag very far behind. After the third movie, Jet Li had a falling out with Golden Harvest and Zhao Wen-Zhuo, another Mainland wushu stylist, took over the role. The next two films are generally well-liked by fans of the genre (especially the fifth one), although the box office receipts showed that the general Hong Kong populace didn't care for the new guy. In 1997, two years after the last OUATIC movie had came out, the sixth movie, Once Upon a Time in China and America (OUATICA) came out.
Jet Li returned to reprise his role as Wong Fei-Hung, the role that lifted him into stardom. Tsui Hark, Hong Kong's once visionary director who directed the first three installments, came on a board as producer. Directorial duties were given to Sammo Hung. I believe this was to be Sammo's triumphant return to the Jade Screen, after directing and starring in a lot of box-office failures during the early 1990s. It's a shame that his career took a downward turn after he stopped making movies with Jackie Chan, since he's an excellent choreographer and actor. Unfortunately, while this movie did pretty good in the HK box office, the general consensus on this movie is that it's a weak, if not the weakest, entry in the series.
In the 1880s/1890s, Wong Fei-Hung (Jet Li), Aunt Yee (Rosamund Kwan), and Clubfoot/Ghost Foot Seven (Xiong Xin Xi) have come to the United States to visit the American branch of Wong's clinic, Po Chi Lam. The movie opens on the carriage ride from San Fransisco, where we find Aunt Yee trying to teach English to the other two. They come across Billy, a gunfighter who's alone in the wilderness and dying of thirst. They save him and allow him to accompany them on their journey.
At a routine dinner stop, the carriage passengers are attacked by a by a tribe of hostile Indians. Luckily, the indians didn't count on raiding a party in which one of the members is a Chinese martial arts master, and soon Wong and Seven are dishing out kung fu goodness to those pesky Indians. Unfortunately, during the fracas, our three heroes get trapped in a carriage which goes into a river and our heroes get separated.
Seven and Aunt Yee end up in Fort Stockton (awww yeah!!! Stockton baby!!) where Buck-Tooth Sol takes cares of them. When they come to, they begin to look for Wong, but to no avail. At one point, they start putting up posters all over the place, only to incur the ire of the racist sheriff's deputies and regulars at the local bar. At one point, Aunt Yee goes into the bar asking if anyone has seen Wong, only to be harassed by the racist/sexist men. Luckily, Billy, who's become a sheriff's deputy, intervenes and even stages America's first "pit fight" when he bets everyone that they couldn't take Seven in hand-to-hand combat. hehehe
While all this is going on, Wong has turned up at a village of benevolent Indians. Unfortunately, Wong has bumped his head and now can't remember who he is. At first everyone is suspicious of him. Then he defends the village from the arrogant leader of the malevolent Indian tribe and wins everyone's respect, including the chief's daughter.
Wong is eventually reunited with his friends and the Chinese community back in town. After a really cool fight in which Seven impersonates Wong Fei-Hung's past arch-enemies, Wong gets his memory back and starts his usual speech-giving to the Chinese community there.
The real conflict begins when the town mayor goes bankrupt. Heavily in debt and without the money to pay the Chinese miners, he decides to make a pact with the team of bandits and have them rob the bank. What the bandits don't know is that the mayor is using their robbery as a diversion to still the $400,000 in the bank vault. The mayor then has the foreman of the Chinese miners plant a money bag in Po Chi Lam in order to frame the Chinese. Everyone is arrested and seven of them, including Wong, Seven, and Billy, are sentenced to be hanged.
The plot of this movie is that of a typical Western movie. All the normal elements are there: corrupt officials, evil Indians, bandits, barfights, etc. Like his classic Eastern Condors, Sammo Hung takes a genre that Hong Kong filmmakers aren't really familiar with and spices up all the clichés with his superior action direction. Whereas Eastern Condors was a collection of war movie clichés, OUATICA is a collection of western clichés. It doesn't always work, but the inclusion of wire-fu in a western setting and a kung fu fighting bandit(!) help liven things up*.
As I mentioned earlier, the first three OUATIC films were fictional stories rooted in history. Among the historical elements tackled were the exploitation of Chinese laborers in the USA, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the Nationalists, and the Russo-Japanese War. The fourth movie was a fun film, although the plot was derivative of the second and third entries. The fifth one dealt with pirates. This one kind of finds some weird middle ground between the first three and the other two. The plot itself is pretty cliché, but there the movie does make reference to the mistreatment of the Chinese by Americans and to their labors as coolies and mineworkers. However, instead of getting melodramatic about it, the movie goes into self-parody and has Wong Fei-Hung giving speeches that everyone falls asleep to.
I think this is one of those movies whose depiction of white people is a retaliation for the all of what Americans used to do to Chinese in their movies. All those years of putting make-up on white people, giving them fake buck teeth, and having them talk in proverbs has finally caught up to us. If you notice, there are only 2, maybe 3, sympathetic caucasians in the entire film. There's Billy, who's a gunfighter with a heart of gold. Heck, he even takes martial arts lessons from Seven during the movie. There's one of the bar girls that's pretty nice to Sol and the others. The Sheriff is sympathetic times; he does what can in spite of working for a corrupt, racist mayor. But everyone else are jerks and crooks, even the law.
I'm not sure, but I wonder if Jet Li did the dubbing for the Mandarin track. It sounds like him. If it isn't then they found a good person to do it (kinda like the guy who did Jackie Chan's dubbing in Crime Story and sounded almost just like him). All the Chinese actors do a good job. The Caucasian actors do well enough; they're certainly better then the actors from The Master and a lot of the 1990s Godzilla movies. The weak links are the Indians, who really aren't good actors...at all. Too bad Tsui and Sammo couldn't get those wise-cracking Indians from Shanghai Noon, that would've been cool.
While plot and characters are all well and good, this is a Jet Li movie. We watch these movies in order to see Jet Li kung fu people into oblivion. Do we get that? Oh heck yeah! Sammo Hung's fight direction is slick, fast, and, while wire-enhanced, is a great showcase for everyone's talents (even Aunt Yee and Billy get up in on the fighting). A lot of people complain about the camerawork, and while it does move fast, the fights still look nothing short of awesome to me. If I had a complaint about the fights, it's that there wasn't enough of them. But then, I usually always feel this way after watching a Sammo Hung movie. Sammo Hung's movies generally tend to consist of a few short bouts leading up to the climax, and this one follows trend.
One thing I must point out is Xiong Xin-Xin's performance. Most fans of the genre think that he's the best part about the OUATIC series (at least 4 and 5). He is great, but Yuen Bun (the action director for the fourth and fifth entries) used a lot of wires for is fights. This time, Sammo uses few wires with him and he kicks like a son of a... I don't think I've ever seen him fight better than in this movie.
Jet Li looks awesome. I'm willing to contend that this is his best performance since Fist of Legend. While he's had a lot of great moments and specific fights, he's just mesmerizing here. Sure, Sammo uses some wires, but I think it looks smooth and natural. It never seems like his abilities are being replaced by the wires, just slightly enhanced. He also does a lot of great kicks (w/o wires) and well...I get excited just talking about it.
One of the calling cards of Chinese cinema is the use objects and environment in the fights. Sammo furnishes us with plenty of those. Tomahawks, spears, poles, wet cloths, carriages, horses, tables, etc. are used in some of the pre-climax fights. The finale, when Jet Li takes on the kung fu bandit, Sammo Hung spruces up the fight with money bags, spurs, hats, beer bottles, chairs, tables, troughs, and even a windmill for good measure.
So where does this movie fall in with the rest of the series? Storywise, you can probably rank it between the previous Jet Li entries and the other two. The fifth one got bogged down by too much silly slapstick going on with the characters. Luckily, this one ditched Max Mox, whose portrayal of Leung Foon had become grating (I wished Yuen Biao had kept that role throughout the series).
The first one had some great fighting (courtesy of two of the Yuen brothers and Lau Kar-Wing), albeit a little rough around the edges. The second one, which was choreographed by the legendary Yuen Woo-Ping, was better in some regards. OUATIC III had a few good object fights, but the movie was missing the climatic one-on-one (What's up with that?). The fourth film had its moments, but it used a lot of wires and for the great cast it had (Zhao Wen-Zhuo, Xiong Xin-Xin, Billy Chow, Chin Kar-Lok, etc), it didn't seem like a tour-de-force for anyone. And the fifth one is just overrated as far as I'm concerned. I don't know, I can't help but feel OUATICA was simply a better showcase for Jet Li and his costars.
So all in all, this is a very entertaining movie. The fights are as good as you'd expect from Sammo Hung and Jet Li does an excellent job this time around. Had the story had just a little more self-parody to it, they could've just as well renamed the movie Last Hero in China and America. Or more appropriately, Last Hero in America since none of the movie does take place in China.
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