Once Upon A Time In China (DVD) (Japan Version) DVD Region 2

Kung fu was genre non grata in 1990, replaced by Chow Yun-fat style heroic bloodshed movies. Yet director Tsui Hark took a gamble and announced he was reviving the Wong Fei-hung franchise, starring Jet Li, then living disreputably in San Francisco. Assembling Little Fortune, Yuen Biao, career actress, Rosamund Kwan, Cantopop star, Jacky Cheung, and character actor, Kent Cheng, Tsui shot not just a movie, but an epic.

The film paints a picture of a living, breathing historical Hong Kong poised on the brink of the 20th Century, caught between looking forward and looking back, pulled between Britain and China. The foreigners are all busy tearing China up into bite-sized pieces, with help from the Manchu government, while the Hong Kongies just want to keep their heads down and survive. In the middle of this stands Wong Fei-hung, an avatar of virtue and humanity. He wants peaceful coexistence between Chinese and Westerner, but the upper-class foreigners and Chinese regard that as a threat to their ultimate goal: profits built on the backs of Hong Kong Chinese.

However grand the background, the story of Once Upon a Time in China is always mapping the human heart of Wong Fei-hung as he tries to hold onto his identity in an everchanging world. In Fei-hung Jet Li found the role he would be forever associated with, and he inhabits it fully - his screen presence cuts through the complex plotting like a knife. Whether he's engaged in eternal flirtation with his Aunt Thirteen (Rosamund Kwan), fighting Master Yim (a martial artist gone astray), or laying waste to the Shaho Gang with an umbrella the viewer's eyes are pulled to him like a magnet. This is the film that revived the entire genre, spawning five sequels, a TV series, and innumerable parodies, homages, and rip-offs. But the original is still the best. A classic in the truest sense of the word.

by Grady Hendrix

My little plot summary doesn't really do this film justice. It is quite a complex plot and trying to boil it down to a couple of sentences is next to impossible. In fact, the plot is so complex that those people who don't have some knowledge of Chinese history will probably be lost (think how someone watching a film about Paul Revere might feel if they didn't know about US history). But the script is solid enough so that the film doesn't become too complex as to lose the viewer.

At its heart, though, what propels Once are the action sequences. Suffice to say Jet Li has never looked better literally. Of course, his martial arts skills are great and he's convincing as a kung-fu master. The fights in Once, which range from brawls between dozens of people to intense, high-flying one-on-one battles, are expertly choreographed and performed. But, perhaps more importantly, director Tsui Hark, one of the most powerful people in the HK film industry, spared no expense on this film (at least in terms of the Hong Kong film industry, where budgets are miniscule compared to Hollywood's). It simply looks better than most any other HK kung-fu film before or since, even newer special-effects laden movies like The Stormriders. Once's camera and editing techniques in particular are phenomenal and play a vital role in separating this film from others of this kind. Even the burly Kent Cheng (who plays Porky, one of Huang's students) looks like a kung-fu powerhouse in front of Tsui's lens.

The other members of the cast, including Jacky Cheung (as a Chinese/American doctor named So) and Yuen Biao (as Fong, an acrobatic actor who turns against Huang) put in good performances as well. It's a pretty rare occurrence when an ensemble cast could perform within a martial arts movie, but Tsui manages to put a good balance between all the characters, so none of them seem superfluous or unnecessary. Also, it was really nice seeing a romantic subplot in a movie that didn't overpower the scenes around it. The scenes with Huang and Aunt Yee (Kwan) are actually handled with tenderness and care, unlike the hammy melodrama present in most other films.

Once Upon a Time in China is simply one of the best martial arts films ever made. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out on a special treat that showcases some of Tsui Hark and Jet Li's best work.

RATING: 9.25

by Neil Koch