Il était une fois en Chine

The first of the new wave of Chinese movies is a masterpiece of action cinema, and looks gorgeous. Jet Lee plays Wong Fei Hung, a popular Chinese folk hero, although I gather he was doubled a fair bit due to an injury. Regardless, the set-piece fights are impressive and memorable, with imaginative wire work and use of scenery.

This is not to underplay the plot of the movie, which is a poignant view of China's cultural identity being chipped away by western invaders. As always, a lot appears to be lost for those like myself who don't speak Chinese, but the subtitles are clear and well produced. On DVD the option is there to play the movie dubbed, but please resist. Very few kung-fu movies aren't ruined by terrible dubbing, and this is no exception. The DVD I was watching had a very interesting commentary by man-in-the-know Bey Logan, a picture gallery and an interview with Jet. It's certainly worth updating your old VHS copy of this classic movie.

I think this is both troubling as a film and revealing of Chinese character. As a standalone, it is I suppose fairly enjoyable, the cinematography is nice, the story long but intimate in spots, the fights some of them amazing. But, this is not just a standalone, it has a rich context - the protagonist is a popular folk hero, the times of foreign oppression and inept administration it depicts were real and left punishing scars in the Chinese soul.

Something else bothers though. As a student of the Chinese model, I encounter this elsewhere, I believe it does a lot of bad, and turns away as many people as it brings in. What they Chinese do usually has both hard and soft aspects, Confucius and Tao would be on opposite ends of this, kung fu and meditation. When Western people are exposed to it, say with a film like this, unwittingly we register it as one picture. It endears, it's a scented romance.

What isn't so easy to appreciate though is that to get that single harmonious picture the Chinese obsessively flatten their multifaceted experience, this is evident in the continuous reinvention, passionately undertaken, of both their political and martial arts narratives, and of course their penchant for opera. Naturally, corners have to be cut in the name of a tidy narrative.

And this carries over in (cinematically) packaging these things in ways that eliminate subtler levels in what they do. Because the harmonizing effort is forcible, it can't help but take out of these things their soft wind, which is their real power in both the Taoist and creative sense. If you accept as I do that wisdom is tolerance and capacity for cognitive dissonance, this artificial harmony wherever encountered dumbs us down.

In the film, you have the good sifu vs evil sifu, the good-natured but bumbling disciples, the evil street gang, the cruel army bureaucrat and foreign officials - all of them 'hard' stereotypes from the Boxer era, acted in a hard (external) manner.

And I believe the point at some stage was to contrast soft 'chi' based awareness in the Jet Li character with hard 'iron body' kung fu in the rival master as the difference in karmas they set in motion. This has been flattened in favor of more or less the same kung fu.

So hard politics, hard acting (mirrored in the opera stage and two 'fake' actors), hard martial arts in the service of mythmaking. Is there anything soft here, internal? The woman. She has come back from the West, straddles both worlds. She has come back with a camera, which she uses to snap pictures.

Her eye is 'soft', stills motion, caresses the shadow of the one she loves. Too bad they didn't make more room for this, using it to cultivate dissonance, reflection, innate capacities for clarity and beauty, which could then transfer over to the fights.

The music is marvelous though. And the camera glides as though on wires of its own.

Two of my favorite films are "One Upon a Time in America" and Once Upon a Time in the West." So naturally, I would be attracted to this film just to see if it matches the others. It does.

Jet Li stars as the legendary Chinese hero Wong Fei-Hong. He is fighting against intruders from the West. Yep, invading armies like us. The people of China are not going to give in. He is asked to train the locals in kung fu.

Things get complicated with the arrival of Wong's "Aunt" Yee (Rosamund Kwan), just back from a two-year stay in the West. She is not really his Aunt, so romance simmers between the two.

There are plenty of evildoers in this film. Gangs looking for protection money, corrupt government officials (no surprise there!), and those nasty foreigners.

You will want to watch this film more than once. Jet Li's performance, coupled with his kung fu wizardry, carries the viewer through any shaky patches. The fight scenes are the main attraction, of course, and the film delivers the goods again and again.

Once Upon a Time in China is quite simply one of the best films ever to come out of Hong Kong from almost every perspective.

Jet Li stars in the role he was born to play (in my opinion), real-life martial arts master, doctor and commander of the local militia, Wong Fei-Hung. Despite not even being able to speak Cantonese his acting in this just using facial expression, and body language is highly impressive, conveying a man of great dignity and command above the real age of Jet Li, answering the critics who considered him too young for the role. It must have been a difficult role for him to take on, with Kwan Tak-Hing (played Wong Fei Hung in around 100 films) and Jackie Chan (Drunken Master I and II) being his predecessors.

The story is very complex - possibly a little too complex - and transcends a good many martial arts films whose plots can easily be summed up in a single sentence. Wong Fei-Hung has to deal with American slavers, local gangs, a renegade martial arts master and even his own wayward (but well-intentioned students). On top of this he has to contend with his growing affection for Aunt Yee (Rosamund Kwan) which is important as it is set around the end of the 19th century when there were great social changes in China. This is typified with his relationship with his aunt who is not related to him by blood, but with whom it would be taboo to marry. The fact that this is a series of films allows the relationship to develop also sets it apart from many Hong Kong films where any romances are usually very fast-moving and unrealistic.

The rest of the cast is extremely good, slightly more so than later episodes. The wonderfully athletic Yuen Biao plays Leung Foon, a trainee actor who wants to learn kung fu to protect himself - it is a shame he allegedly fell out with director Tsui Hark over screen time as his replacement in subsequent films is comic but has not got the martial arts skills. Kent Cheng is perfect for the role of the larger-than-life Lam Sai-Wing who is Wong Fei Hung's head student. His other students are played with vigour by Jacky Cheung and Yuen Kam-Fai.

The villains are suitably colourful, and the lead bad guy played by Yam Sai-Kun is interesting because he is not as two-dimensional as he could have been and is almost a double for Wong Fei-Hung and what he could have become had he gone down the wrong path.

The action is superb which is unsurprising considering it is choreographed by Yuen Woo-Ping, though critics will still fault the wire-work and use of doubles. The final showdown is a masterpiece of editing as Jet Li was injured and had to be doubled for many of the shots that weren't above the waist, but his fist techniques make up for this. The film has a long running time for a martial arts flick so for once there is plenty of time for story and action.

An honourable mention has to go the music written by James Wong, as it is one of the greatest and most memorable of all martial arts theme music.

In short they don't come much better than this. People who enjoyed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would probably love this and it should also be seen by anyone who has seen Cradle 2 the Grave and thinks Jet Li can't act. The first 2 sequels for this are also warmly recommended.

A traditional kung fu movie with elements of the Wuxia sub-genre, Once Upon A Time In China is considered by many to be one of the finest martial arts movies of all time; I don't rate it so highly, preferring my action to be a little more realistic and a tad more 'bone-crunching'.

Set in a troubled 19th century China, where centuries of tradition is being threatened by an influx of foreigners, this historical epic is directed by Tsui Hark and stars the incredible Jet Li, ably supported by Rosamund Kwan, Biao Yuen, Jacky Cheung and Kent Cheng. With a pedigree like that, I was expecting something truly astounding, but what I got was an overlong, over-stylised and definitely over-rated film. Saddled with a dreadfully dull story and some particularly poor comedic moments, it does not entertain as much as I had hoped.

Li plays Wong Fei Hung, martial arts master and all round good guy, who, along with his students, battles the foreign invaders who are plundering China. Kwan plays his love interest, Aunt Yee, who has recently returned from America, and who tries to educate Hung about the wonders of the Western world. As the troubles mount, Aunt Yee becomes the target of unscrupulous traders who try to sell her into prostitution, leaving Hung and his men no option but to pit their fighting skill against guns in a daring rescue attempt.

Although the movie admittedly features some well choreographed fight scenes which will undoubtedly appeal to fans of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (as will the breath-taking cinematography), the action relies too much on clever wire-work and skillful editing for its impact, and the whole affair left this particular viewer rather disappointed.