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Once Upon a Time in China 2

Once Upon a Time in China 2

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jet Li's Best
Review: OUTC II carried over very well from part one. Jet's acting and martial arts are shown very well in this movie. The story in this movie was excellent has great scenery and sound. Wong Fei shows why his beliefs are so strong and he will not back down to a false religion. This movie is a must have and is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Could have been better
Review: Set approximately toward the turn of the 20th century, OUTC II is Jet Li as Wong Fei-hung travelling with A. Yee and Fu to a medical convention which is disrupted by an anti-western/foreigner religous sect and the usual corrupt official (played by Donnie Yen, who in interviews, seldom has a good thing to say about Jet Li). While the film is visually spectacular, the fight scenes could have been better, not to mention a little more frequent. As is often the case in period pieces like this, probably a little too much effort went into the scenery and not enough into creating a story that would be held together with phenomenal fight sequences (The Emperor and the Assasin with Gong Li is a case in point; more smoke than fire). The fights were more than a little claustophobic, with Li and whoever his opponent was at any given time always banging their shins (figuratively speaking) on the limited space they were fighting in. Li's on screen style appears to be largely northern shaolin, which is full of long, extended, circular movements, in which Li has a talent for displaying (at least in other films); but in OUTC II, he always seems hemmed in, especially when fighting the leader of the religious sect and the final fight scene with Donnie Yen. It's still well worth watching, because watching Jet Li fight is kind of like pizza; even when he's not great, he's still pretty damn good. But he's definately exhibited better moves elsewhere. Both Fong Sai Yuk films were much better qualitatively in terms of the fight scenes, and granted, aesthetics are important in everything, and many films suffer from a lack of visual enticement, but you rent/buy a martial arts video for the martial arts, not the background. Beautiful displays of scenery are what Impressionist paintings are for. Still, despite all of my complaints, four stars for Jet Li's always awesome skills (no matter how constricted) and for Rosamund Qwans big brown eyes. Max Mok is, as always, entertaining as the bumbling Fu, and Donnie Yen can always be counted on to put on a nice display of skill. And despite all my of my critisism the visual recreation of colonial China 100 years ago is very well done.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Breathtaking martial arts fighting scenes
Review: The sequal to the hit Once Upon A Time in China takes off with Wong Master (Jet Li) taking a vacation with a couple of his best students. Right form the beginning of the movie Wong Master's martial art prowess is displayed. In this beginning scene he encounters a "White Lotus" sect whose aggressive ways in dealing with foreign affairs lead to too much killing. The fight that is created between Wong (Jet Li) and the White Lotus sect displays an internal fight with one's own countrymen. The fight scenes in this sequal are original and high intensity. A very imortant message slips through all the perfectly coreographed action scenes. Even the opposition may be evil and underhanded, violence is only a short-term solution. A nice touch to the movie is the romantic stirring between Wong Master and very distant Aunt with no blood relation. It's not as sick as it sounds... Definitely a must have.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A bad sequel to Once Upon a Time in China
Review: This film does not come close to the quality of Once Upon a Time in China. First of all, the plot is weak, it does not have the kind of power that the original of this series did. The characters in this film seem like they are out of a comic book, while the characters in the first film were interesting and complex. The kungfu is mostly unrealistic wirework, and while Once Upon a Time in China had some of this, the emphasis was on realistic martial arts. In the original, the main characters were trying to resist the influence of the West which was destroying their culture, but in this version, the main characters are actually on the side of the Westerners and they are fighting their own people! There is no explanation of why Wong Fei Hung and his crew would side with the people who were their enemies in the last film. One of the reasons the original film was so good, was because it was about brave Chinese patriots trying to protect their culture, but in this film is seems as though they have switched sides.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Breath Taking
Review: This is now my favorite movie of all time,period.That includes all American movies as well so you know this movie must be pretty good considering I am an American who only speaks ENGLISH.This flick is done right,Jet Li and Yen are amazingly quick together in thier stick brawling scenes, and it is truly a pleasure to watch.But what added a great sense of suspense to the movie was the White Lotus cult,these guys are nuts,if you see the first scene then youll know what I mean,especailly when the two guys eat the sticks on fire(close up and all) and their priest deflects sword attacks and gets kicked in the nuts viciously by his students to demonstrate invincibility(but of course not to Wong Fei Hung).There was also alot of violence and the cults songs are almost hypnotizing ,especially the blind man's,I CANT GET THEM OUT OF MY HEAD!YOU MUST OWN THIS MOVIE KUNGFU FAN OR NOT.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DUMB!!
Review: This is supposed to be a kung fu movie right? IF so, why are there only 3 fight scenes in the whole 2 hours that it runs? And the fight scenes aren't good at all. This is the dumbest Jet Li movie I have seen yet. "Meltdown" follows close behind. If you are a Jet Li fan like me, and you want to see him at what he does best, rent "Fist of Legend" (MY FAV.), "Twin Warriors," and "The Enforcer." Leave this one on the shelves.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great continuation of the series
Review: This movie is a great continuation of the OUATIC series. It picks up some time later after the first one, with Wong Fei Hung, his asst. Foon, and Aunt 13 travelling to Canton to attend a medical convention. Unfortunately, Canton is in the midst of riots brought on by a nationalist group, the White Lotus, whom take an immediate disliking to Aunt 13 for her western ways.

Great fighting, better than the first. The storyline is also a very interesting continuation from 1; while in 1 we saw the western influence and exploitation seeping into turn of the century China, here we glimpse the other side of the coin, non-exploitative foreigners being persecuted by patriotic groups.

This movie is for anyone interested in Chinese history, Jet Li, martial arts or period pieces. Once Upon a Time in China continues to be quite the epic story.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: truly kung fu master in all round kung fu history
Review: This movie is the center master piece of all martial art movies, very and I mean very remarkable scenes, fights between Donny Yen and Jet Li and the cult master. It speaks a little humor that works better than the first movie, Tsu Hark has very apparently found the correct "style" to deliver this movie, this action package remains one of the top action thriller of all time in my mind. I found the idea of Donnie's role using wet twisted cloth as weapon is very intriguing, but yet when he was beaten by Jei Li using a broken bamboo to slice it apart is even more interesting. The thing is the weapon is created without intention in mind and the creative deadly idea was make right at the moment when Jei Li's almost got strangle to death by the wet cloth, the idea is just tricky but works remarkably. It tells u in a sense that the most powerful weapon at the end can be a simple creative mind that trigger just in a matter of second. I like that fight a lot. And the romance between Jet Li and his aunt in this confusing family branching thing has much thrill too, basically the girl is Jet Li's Aunt but they dun directly blooded each other as their accestors only linked to each other may be 5 or 6 generations back, but in each traditional chinese family they always bring along their whole family branch record so if it happens u found somebody's grand 10X generations ago was once in the branch he might go easy on u if hes richer. with this sense in mind, so when Jet Li propose to the girl its consider very outrages as even shes a lot younger than Jet Li but she s a senior of his and even they dun even have teh same last name but they do come from the same family. But then they are gonna get marry.. the whole damn thing is both amusing and confusing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: This one was better than the first OUATIC
Review: This movie was better than the first one. the final fight with the "White Lotus" society was pretty good.
But what made this a classic and a must see for HK Kung Fu fans are the 2 fight scenes between Donny Yuen and Jet li. The Shaolin Stick vs towl fight scene in the middle between Donny and Jet was thrilling to watch. The final fight scene was the bomb, with Donny using a ridiculous sheet of towl again as a weapon.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: kinda disapointing
Review: this movie was ok, but it doesn't fit in well as a ouatic sequel. Rent before buyin it.


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