Once Upon a Time in China
Synopsis
Never was a Hero needed more...
Set in late 19th century Canton this martial arts film depicts the stance taken by the legendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung (1847-1924) against foreign forces' (English, French and American) plundering of China.
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Popular reviews
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No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns.
-Yim*Note: watched the original 134 min cut of the film as opposed to the 99 min North American Cut.*
I'm going to make a very broad and general observation about period martial arts films from China and Hong Kong. You have some films that are purposely (I think) very "western audience friendly", they're tone and structure are such that it plays better to an international audience. The advantages of this is fairly obvious. On the flip side you have films that don't take that into account at all and take full advantage of it's Chinese culture. This sometimes includes having goofy humor mixed in with serious drama,…
Recent reviews
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I thought I'd give this film a third chance to see if my opinion has changed at all over the last few years; it hasn't. Lots of cheesy music and melodrama with a couple of good fight scenes. I need to see some golden age kung fu from the 1970s to see if this film is an anomaly or representative of the genre as a whole. However, despite my disappointment, I have to admit that the ladder fight IS great.
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Why It’s Essential — The series that this film kick-started is a significant success in Hong Kong cinema.
Why You’ll Want to Skip It — You prefer your “arts” sans martial.
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Silly crazy kung-fu nonsense.
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I wonder how many times David Milch watched this before he created Deadwood. At least 80, right?
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One of Tsui Hark's finest! A great martial arts movie about Wong Fei Hung with Wushu Master Jet Li. Also starring Yuen Biao (afaik the only movie with Jet) but too bad he gets no chance to show off.
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No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns.
-Yim*Note: watched the original 134 min cut of the film as opposed to the 99 min North American Cut.*
I'm going to make a very broad and general observation about period martial arts films from China and Hong Kong. You have some films that are purposely (I think) very "western audience friendly", they're tone and structure are such that it plays better to an international audience. The advantages of this is fairly obvious. On the flip side you have films that don't take that into account at all and take full advantage of it's Chinese culture. This sometimes includes having goofy humor mixed in with serious drama,…
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64/100
So....uh, what is everyone's tolerance for atrocious acting by foreigners in Asian movies? Because, you know, Once Upon a Time in China is cool and everything, but the white guys are fucking terrible in every single way. It more or less destroys any pathos the film is trying to generate.
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GReat old school martial arts movie with an amazing cast and superb cinematography. Definetely a landmark movie for jet li and tsui hark. A must see for any fan of hk cinema.
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2/3/01 - After seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (see below), I saw that some of the reviews compared it to Once Upon a Time in China. Intrigued, I decided to rent this on DVD. I was pretty disappointed. The action scenes are cool, but the movie as a whole seemed pretty sub-par. One redeeming point was the commentary track by Ric Meyers. It contained lots of cool info about kung-fu movies.