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 -
). 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.