![]() I’ve plugged that annoying gap in my Hong Kong film experience, and have finally seen Jet Li in his career defining role. Even Wong Fei-hung’s kung fu comes up wanting against bullets.Ĭonclusion I’m happy now. Rivalries and mistakes happen between the French, the British, and the Americans, with shots fired, and it’s usually the local Chinese that pay the price when they get caught in the cross fire. ![]() ![]() The Shahe have powerful friends, the foreign powers vying for economic control, they’re reshaping China in their own image. Yet the officials blame his militia for the problem. His militia comes up against the Shahe gangsters, whose least crime is the protection racket that they run in the city. His aunt returns from abroad, having adopted western styles and manners, and one of his disciples, So has spent so long in America that he can hardly speak Cantonese any more. Wong Fei-hung represents a degree of traditionalism, but even he stands at odds with the Imperial Court, not least because of the way they deal with outsiders. As mentioned, it’s China poised between the old world and the modern age. The film really sets about capturing a moment, a tone in history. Jet Li is electric as Wong Fei-hung, but you also have a strong role from Yuen Biao as Leung Foon, such that this film feels like a two-hander. Then you have Yuen Woo-ping’s stunning action choreography, mixing traditional martial arts with weighty wire-work. The opening scene of the training sequence on the beach, with a cast of hundreds is breathtaking in its size and elegance. Tsui Hark’s direction is fantastic this feels like a big budget opus. Trying to write a précis of this film’s plot was challenge in itself, but Once Upon a Time in China has often been cited as the best kung-fu film of the nineties. Instead they are a mish-mash of ideas and plot threads, maybe even a few comedy sketches thrown together, and they all somehow come together and make sense by the end of the film. These aren’t films that follow conventional narrative or linear plots. Tsui Hark directing, Yuen Woo-ping as action co-ordinator, and of course, Jet Li starring, they sparked a revival of the classic kung-fu genre, once more re-inventing the beloved Wong Fei-hung character.Īfter some time away from Hong Kong cinema, especially the kung fu movies of the eighties and nineties, I have to take a little time to get into that head space again. They’re the films that everyone pointed to as classics of the genre even back then. Eureka Entertainment give me a chance to plug that hole in my collection by releasing the Once Upon a Time in China Trilogy on re-mastered Blu-ray, the quintessential nineties kung-fu movies. Looking at my shelves, there is an absolute paucity of kung-fu action from the nineties, which is a shame as that was when Jet Li was in his element. What first drew me to the medium were the films of Jackie Chan, and most of his classic films were made in the late seventies and well into the eighties, and I started reviewing them on DVD back in the 2000s, when Donnie Yen was the big draw. ![]() Introduction I do like a bit of Hong Kong kung-fu cinema, but I’ve somehow managed to miss out a whole decade in my appreciation of it. ![]()
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