Badmovies.org Forum

I remember this was a real perspection setter to me back in my middle school years. The European nations coming in and calling the shots in China, luring people in with America being made of pure gold only to be put into horrible working conditions.

But more importantly it was a really entertaining Jet Li movie. Tons of actions and characters, and a very elaborate final fight. What I find so bad ass about the fight between Wong and Yim is not just all of the nifty effects they did but the fact that Wong totally dominates Yim who gets so few hits in and yet the fight is still bad ass. They pretty much kept up the tradition of Wong outclasses the final fighter through out the next two films and "Great China Hero" (and I wouldn't be surprised if did with the last three movies.)

So I call it a classic. I'm sad that they cut the cast in half starting with the second movie but despite that and being not so gritty Once upon a Time in China II is still a really good sequel, the third one was entertaing but my least favorite.

Oh and I first saw these when they were dubbed and on VHS. Watching in Chinese clears up a lot of thing because they changed the significane of something with dubbing. In one scene of the second movie (dubbed) they complain about something to Wong, then his assistant goes 'he's getting to that all ready!' in the Chinese version the outspeaker says they can't understand him (Wong's speaking Chinese, other guy English) Fong thinks the English speaker wantst them to speak up. So yeah dubbing it kind of messed it up. Whatever the DVDs have fixed that

 :thumbup:

This was a big disappointment for me.  It has such an excellent reputation, but I found it fairly boring.  And the fight scenes are just not that good.  Yuen Woo-Ping had done better work more than a decade earlier in films like The Magnificent Butcher (one fight better than any in OUATIC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Fu9J1Pl24 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Fu9J1Pl24)).  I think a lot of this is the style of the fights slowing things down so much - there will be like one or two attempted strikes, than one character will jump like 20 feet away or do something requiring multiple cutaways.  Then the fight is also in slow motion, making it unbearably slow. 

I do think the second film has better fight scenes, but I still don't like them a whole lot - and I think the plot is not very interesting, even though I do understand a good portion of the background about the Boxer Rebellion and what not.

BTW, I haven't seen OUATIC IV or V, but I did see VI (Once Upon a Time in China and America).  It's a bit of a mess storyline, character and plot wise, but the fight scenes are entertaining (if chaotic and over-edited at times).  Worth a rental. 

Oh yeah Butcher is a classic I need to re-watch that one.