[KFCC] Once Upon A Time in China Review

Story: Master Wong Fey Hong( Jet Li ) is left in charge to create a militia in a province in China. With the coming years more and more foreigners come to China to exploit its various resources. A man named Fu (Yuen Biao) gets into trouble with the local triad and ask for help from the militia, with the fighting that soon follows Master Wong and his militia gets into trouble with the local governor. The leader of the triad wishes to take revenge on Master Wong so he allies with the American foreigners to get what he wants. Meanwhile a chinese man escapes from the americans and explains to Master Wong that all the promises the Americans make about gold and prosperity in the US are lies, that the chinese are used as slaves. Master Wong is forced to fight the Americans to defend their culture and people.

Review: This is one of Jet Li's classic movies, it was so popular that it was followed by several sequels. The story takes place in a turbulent time in China's history, when foreigner were coming to exploit its people and resources. The general line of the story is the loss of chinese culture to the foreigners but there is also several smaller stories going on. This makes it a complex movie and not the easiest to follow.

Jet Li plays the role of the legendary Master Wong Fey Hong, the part is played with great skill and beautiful style. There are many other supporting characters, they all have an interesting feeling to them. Even tho there is no in dept background you will still become attached to these characters. In our opinion this is one of the best qualities that a movie can have, characters that you get attached too.

This movie has some of the best Kung Fu we have ever seen, Jet Li is truly a master of the art and in this movie he proves it. The Kung Fu is a little surrealistic in some scene but Jet Li is the best at making the unbelievable believable by using his wire effects. The fights are beautifully choreographed where it almost seems like a mystical dance. Some of these fights will leave you breathless, especially the final fight where Master Wong fights Master Yim on flying ladders.

The Subtitles on MediAsian version are plain horrible, the reason for this is that the subtitles are from the original widescreen version as they put it to fullscreen version they lost the front and back end of the text. This made it very hard to follow the story as you lost half the text. If you ever buy this film be sure to get the DVD version as that should have good subtitles. Even if it was hard for us to understand the story we enjoyed this film very much. This is definitely one of Jet Li's best kung fu movie and if we could fully understand all the text I am sure the story was very good too. For any fan of Jet Li and Kung Fu this film is a must see, you will not be disappointed.