San lau sing wu dip gim

Confusing at first. It was hard for me to figure out who was on whose side, and the English translations sometimes read as gibberish, but those are petty qualms. The film is really fun to watch. The wire action is cool and over the top. The fight scenes and gore are very indulgent.

The cast are great, especially Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, and Jimmy Lin. This is a hilarious movie. For those into Martial Arts movies, this is worth a look-see.

I brought this movie as a fan of Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen films. I was not disappointed. The choreography was reasonably good. The storyline was also good. Michelle Yeoh delivered an outstanding performance as usual. The comedy provided was also reasonable although not hysterically funny. I don't particularly enjoy seeing blood in films, this film provided enough of it (though not entirely realistic). I enjoy listening to Chinese songs, the theme tune at the end credits was well performed by Yeoh.

My only criticism(s) are that the director Ching Siu-Tung could have taken care with the use of camera angles; the shots in some of the fight scenes seemed almost entirely random, the user becomes confused during the fight scenes. Furthermore, when I watched the end of this film, it seemed to end suddenly without even a proper ending...what happened as soon as Yeoh turned her back to the screen?

I found this movie slightly disappointing.

It seems there are several different strains of HK Action Flicks. Jackie Chan does pure fist/leg martial arts with no wires. Jet Li tends to use more wires, but "Once Upon a Time in China" seemed to be more dependent on the action than the wires. This move depends so much on wires and magic powers that you really don't get very much in the way of good swordplay and kung-fu. It seemed pretty cheesy from the beginning, and I left it on only because I had nothing better to do. Then it started getting good. The plot gets pretty complicated, as you see hidden motivations and conflicting desires causing problems for the characters. Unfortunately, the movie never really capitalizes on some of the things the characters discover, and the ending reveals a mystery they really hadn't set up well, forcing the characters to reveal too much in their dialogue, as in, "You see, this was my plan all along! Now I shall kill you!" Not dull, exactly, but it never fulfills the potential of the plot developments to overcome a cheesy approach to martial arts.

A typically over the top, highly kinetic wuxia epic from Hong Kong. This one offers a middling budget and an all-star cast, although it's worth noting that story-wise it's much better when detailing larger-than-life characters than it is bringing to life the complexities of a muddled political script. In essence what you get are a number of main characters interacting and occasionally doing battle with some rival factions who have murder in mind.

Part of the film is an ultra-cheesy romance between Tony Leung and Joey Wang, which is quite fun with a lot of flying around in the woods and sweet moments. It's surprisingly old fashioned but genre fans will be more interested in the high energy action scenes, of which there are plenty. These possess extremely choppy choreography - so much so that it's hard to see what's going on at times - but make up for it by being inventively violent, with opponents literally exploding in two when struck by power sword strikes.

A lot of fun comes from seeing Michelle Yeoh as a striking femme fatale although she's slightly underutilised here which is no surprise given the amount of characters in the movie. Donnie Yen is also in the film but used even less although I was pleased to see that his character is a typical hard man even at this early stage of his career. Although the budget isn't high, the trappings of the wuxia genre - outlandish costumes, outdoor scenery, effective sets - are handled adroitly. Animal lovers should be aware of the real-life killing of a deer which may be unpalatable for some.

Once again I find people making crazy reviews about how good the action is in this film and how it's the best feature of the film, fight scenes which require 300 different shots and constant camera angle changes is not good. I love wire action and fantasy martial arts but this is dreadful the characters for some reason was the only thing that kept me watching, but they were not so good as to make you care about them.

Some one else said that it doesn't show off the capabilities of some of the actors, I would have to agree as the fight scenes are awful I don't know how people can say that they are good. I know everyone goes on about crouching tiger, hidden dragon and I agree I'm pretty sick of it to but there is a good reason for it just compare it to this film. The story line is fully explained you don't get a random scene and wonder what the hell is going on, you don't have to watch it 3 times to get a good understanding of whats going on and much of the fight scenes are not just constant changes in camera angles, the fight scenes are easy to follow no one wants to watch a fight scene made up of bits and pieces of different footage. I realise there is a big difference in budget but even the parts of the fight scenes when people are not flying around and are standing in one place, fighting is still just rapid changes in camera shots. There is one part near the end where they actually speed up the action so much it just looks fake and cheap. Once again as I have said before try and watch this film some other way than buying it so that you know what your getting yourself into if you do decide to buy even if it only costs £5.99 like my dvd did it's still not worth the money except for a good laugh at the film and those who rate this film highly on this site.