Il était une fois en Chine : Dr Wong en Amérique

The sixth film in the series, and the welcome return of Jet Li after a break in parts 4 and 5. This time around Wong Fei Hung and his cohorts take a trip to the wild west, a reasonable idea but ultimately one of the weakest of the films. The plot limps along rather pointlessly, although the frequent fight scenes (choreographed by Sammo Hung) are as exciting as ever. Their power is somewhat diminished, however, as at no point do you feel the characters are in any real danger.

Jet's cool bullet-dodging in the climactic fight is fun, but only real highlight is the scene where Fei Hung's loyal comrade Seven attempts to cure his master's amnesia by fighting him in the styles of villains from the previous films.

The supporting cast are a painful bunch of stereotypes, and their acting ability leaves a great amount to be desired, but if you can get past that this is enjoyable enough hokum.

This movie kind of makes you wonder if he wants to hit that niche that Jackie Chan has in China. The fighting is not only off the wall, but it's comical as well. Don't expect to see the serious Jet Li that you're used to though, otherwise you'll be disappointed. The best thing about this movie is; you didn't have to see any of the others in the series to know what's going on. Most Chinese sequels tend to leave anyone who hasn't seen the first movies in the dark. If you just take it for what it was meant to be, you'll enjoy it immensely. You can tell that Jet Li was making an attempt to start making his presence in America. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who's a fan of Jet Li.

Jet Li returns as Wong Fei Hung in this great epic series of China's history. With Sammo Hung at the director's chair, one can expect some high-quality choreography. And good fights are not lacking in this movie. I thought that the characters were more defined and likeable then in OUATIC 4. I thought that the epic quality of the story and themes weren't there, but setting that aside, the movie is fun to watch. Sammo proves that he's one of the best choreographers, and Jet Li proves that he's one of the best on-screen fighters.

Jet Li reprises the role that he was born to play as Wong Fei Hung. This time, Master Wong is in America to set up his clinic Po Chi Lam there. But things go wrong as he gets amnesia and lives with some Indian tribe.

The story was okay, but the rest of it wasn't. First of all, the fight scenes were poorly filmed. I couldn't tell what was going on since it was blurred and/or sped up. This is too bad since I wanted to see Jet Li's physical talents. Also, the sterotyping of the Indians were pretty bad too. The American actors' lines were horrible and cliched, and the American actors themselves were pretty bad (of course, they could have been bad because of the bad lines they got). There were some good scenes, but a couple of good scenes doesn't make a medicore movie any better. This movie is worth a rental if there is nothing else to rent.

Oct 21

Once upon a time in china and america is the 6th and final film in the series.

I was a little disappointed in this one despite the return of Jet Li. Its effectively a martial arts western and some of it works and some of it doesn't.

I like it but do not love it, not quite up to the standard of Once upon a time in china 1 to 5.

7 out of 10.