Huang Feihong: Ying Xiong you meng

Rise of the Legend is another of those neo-actioners from Hong Kong which deliver the Kung Fu/martial arts goods but we're forced to watch some 'epic' building in the process. With choreography by the peerless Corey Yuen & a rare villainous turn by his Peking Opera classmate Sammo Hung, Legend has a lot going for it but taking events which happened, in this case, the oppression of wharf gangs on the poor & ungainly mating this storyline in a chop socky format, the seams definitely feel the bulge.

This movie takes place in 1868 during the Qing Dynasty in the port city of Guangzhou, China with two rival crime syndicates controlling all of the lucrative American and European trade markets. And because these two crime syndicates are so powerful and ruthless the people living there have to subject themselves to all kinds of degradation simply to make ends meet. So when a young "Wong Fei-Hung" (Eddie Peng) watches as his father is killed trying to save innocent people from a fire set by one of these crime syndicates he decides to do something about it with the help from his close friends "Fiery" (Jing Boran) and "Chun" (Wang Luodan). But in order to accomplish this he must first infiltrate one of these crime organizations and coordinate his actions with his two friends on the outside. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a complicated movie for me to follow in some instances due to the in-depth intrigue and mystery incorporated within the plot. Likewise, some of the unrealistic martial arts scenes left me less than impressed as well. Even so, this wasn't a bad film necessarily and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

special effect, in addition to overly told repetitive boring storyline, totally unnecessary long and tiresome fighting scenes. the only impression of this bad movie is boring, boring and boring. why the Chinese movie industries in mainland china and hong kong so obsessed with this hwang legend. the dialog either done by the actors or voice over by some other people solely doing such line of work, but either turned out to be naturally enough just because of the contrite dialog. it's such a boring storyline with randomly inserted flash backs of the teenage kids or used some westerners for background extra purpose. there is nothing interested enough to keep the interest or focus. every scene in this film looked staged including the costumes and the make-up. the dialog is just so boring and the tempo of the most part of the film is too slow with suddenly explosive fighting scenes, but then again, the off screen narration by the main character also making the viewer like me feel unnecessary and awkward. i know this actor from taiwan is now a rising star, quite hot because he's been showing himself in so many films in recent years, but he actually is not an unique find but a regular and blended guy. all in all, this film is marginally watchable flick, if you have other better choice to kill the time, don't waste it on watching this, it's just so boring.

I got a chance to watch this on premier in Hong Kong. Overall this is the comeback franchise of the Huang Feihong, which was popularized by Jet Li. Now the new actor Eddie Peng (from Taiwan) who portrays the prequel of the Huang Feihong least to say is quite good. This version I find it's more darker than the Jet Li version, but overall I truly quite enjoy the fighting scenes.

The show is narrated in Mandarin and not Cantonese as I would have expect. Overall I think that having a Mandarin version allows a wider coverage of spectators in Asia and China.

The storyline is quite simple, basically it's tells about the young Huang Feihong joins the triad by showing his skills. But the underlying deep intention is to destroy the triad which has been smuggling illegal workers to overseas.

The movie is about the early days of Wong Fei Hung, a real person in late-19th century/early 20th-century China whose deeds have been greatly embellished and made into dozens of films and TV series. He is the same character portrayed by Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time series.

However, the film itself has almost nothing to do with the real person. The main character uses the WFH name and his father conjures up familiar memories of a umbrella-wielding kung fu master popularized by the Iron Monkey film. Also, in the real-life tales of WFH's heroic deeds, it is said that he took on a dock gang in his early days, which this movie loosely portrays.

Other than that, this movie could have simply been a standalone film. But the WFH name is famous throughout China and no doubt was used to sell more tickets.

Although the use of CGI and wire is very noticeable at times, the overall look and choreography of the film is very good. Unfortunately, as is common with Chinese films, too much attention is paid to the look, but not enough to the substance.

Ultimately the movie does not break any new ground. As is common in Chinese action films, characters again do inexplicably idiotic things for the sake of creating "drama" or "emotion" and to create convenient scenarios to push the plot along without any serious attempt to explain WHY.

Overall, it's not a bad movie but it's also little more than another typical Chinese flick that looks good but doesn't do anything beyond that.