Overrated

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Awesome Movie

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

With a shorter running time and a more coherently constructed storyline "Once Upon a Time in China 2" (aka "Wong Fei Hung II: Nam yee tung chi keung") was a better movie than the first movie from 1991.Jet Li returns to play legendary Wong Fei Hung and continues fairly much where part one left the audience. However, the stakes are upped in part two as there is a grand show off between Jet Li and Donnie Yen. And if you get the Hong Kong Legends version, the interview with Donnie Yen is quite worth watching - despite his cocky attitude. It was a nice detail to find out that they were given free hands to go at each other with the bamboo poles.The action and martial arts were amazingly well-choreographed and executed. But of course everything that Yuen Woo-Ping is involved with is fantastic.The story in "Once Upon a Time in China 2" is good and well-paced, right from the very beginning.As in the previous movie, the dialogue and characters of the Western foreigners in China were campy, ridiculous and downright awful. I didn't think anyone ever spoke the same way as they did.If you enjoy Asian martial arts movies then "Once Upon a Time in China 2" is definitely a movie well-worth sitting down to watch.

Review: I didn't think that this movie was in the same class as the first movie. I missed his trusty sidekicks and the script lacked wit and entertainment. The helper that he has in this movie was a bit poor and the action scenes wasn't as great as the first movie. As for the storyline, Dr. Wong is now helping the foreigners against some radical mercenaries who want rid of them. The radicals also have the help from the police who come toe to toe with Jet Li and his companions. The storyline didn't really grip me and the showdown at the end was quite disappointing. On the plus side, there isn't any fighting on strings or flying in the air so the action scenes looked real. The thing that really let the movie down was the poor storyline and the dull characters. I just hope that the 3rd one is better. Disappointing!Round-Up: This is the problem with making sequels! If you give your all in the first movie, you really find it hard to replicate that success. That's exactly what has happened with this film. There was so much going on in the first movie but in this film there just seemed like there was something missing. Maybe it's because I watched part one and two, back to back. Anyway, although I found the movie disappointing, it's still a watchable movie which is better than some martial are movies I have seen recently.Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: HK$30.4millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their Jet Li movies about a doctor who is trying to save the foreigners from radical mercenaries. 4/10

Once Upon A Time there was a place called China II. It was filled with fierce warriors, magical wizards, dragons, and hobbits. Yes, this is the sequel to Once Upon A Time In China III, and also the prequel to Part I. It isn't as good as the predecessor, but it's better than Part I. Our hero Jet Lee returns, and this time HE'S PERSONAL! Living the peacable life for a few weeks (or a fortnight if you like) he travels with his girlfriend Uncle Eleven by plane to Japan for a medical seminar on medicine. Yes, the plot is a lot like Fear And Lovely In Las Vegas but we'll excuse that (as well as the obvious physical similarities between Lee and Deppp). The peace doesn't last long of course (it is a murial arts film after all!) and the lecture is infiltrated by the bastardly Brown Daisy Clan. They are ninjas or samurais or something, but one thing is for sure- they kick shins! Another thing is for sure that they are hard but Lee is harder and decides to take them all on.This is the one where Lee takes on Donnie Osmond on the scaffolding of a building, up ladders, across wooden planks, and through cement mixers- it is usually not unregarded as one of the greatest if not worst fights of all times! It is very excitement with all sorts of kicks and punches and jumpings. When I watch I want to jump into the TV and join in. 'HEE YA!' I fly kick off the wall and knock some bad guy into the hay. Yeah! I love kicking things, it makes me feel super. As Bruce Lee once said, 'Kicking things that don't kick back is better- they don't kick back.' My brother Andy and me used to watch films like this, and then when our parents went out we would pretend we were ninjas and fight too. We would take off of our shoes, but leave on on our socks and fight. He was much smaller than me so I always won, though sometimes he would kick me in the gunnels. Sometimes we would swing at the same time and kick each others feet, that was really sore! It all ended though when the car came up the drive and we had to put all the cushions back on the seats. If mum saw there was a mess, she would turn into a ninja and beat us both, and we would end up in bed without any supper. Sometimes that chump from down the road, Brendan would come and annoy us when we were outside, so we would show off of our Kung Fu skills on him so he cried.This film has many amazement moments and could only have been bettered if Bruce Lee had been in it. One other small problem is the obvious budget cuts. Halfway through the film you can tell that the bad guys are just cardboard cut outs, most noticeably when Lee puts his foot through one guy's chest, gets stuck, and spends the next five minutes fighting with a supposed dead bad guy wrapped round his ankle. This wasn't as bad as the first film where they still used actors, although there only were 4 so when Lee beat up and killed someone, they would get up, sneak round the side of the camera and fight him again. You can also clearly tell that when they run out of cardboard they throw paper mache dummy bad guys into the mix- there is obviously a grip or best boy or producer off screen throwing them into the scene beside the camera. This lends an odd tone to the film. Of course as we all know the last 15 minutes of the film are copied exactly from the first film because of the budget- annoying yes because we never find out what really happens, but good because those 15 minutes from the first were the best from that film apart from the first 90! Best Scene: Lee kicking all the dummies that are being chucked into the room as real bad guys. The funniest part comes when someone grabs the director and throws him in and Lee kicks him in the throat. Ha Ha. The director never spoke again.

Of the three original films by Tsui Hark concerning Wong Fei Hung, this is certainly the best. The construction is tighter than Once Upon a Time in China I, and, although the third film is my personal favorite, this second film does not lapse into martial-arts-film-genre cliché as does the third.Of course that means that, in order to transcend its genre, paradoxically the fights of the second film have to be razor sharp - and they are. The fight scenes in this film were the best up until its time. The final duel between Jet Li and Donnie Yen is staggering, all the more so for being crafted as to appear utterly realistic. Dam', that wet rope flying at the camera scared the bejeezus out of me! But since the film presents kung fu so convincingly, for that very reason we can take it in stride, as just another element in the film's complex interweaving of traditional culture and modern politics. The film is really about the birth of a new nation, which has yet to be invented - the Republic of China, represented by its highly respected progenitor, Dr. Sun Yet Sen, the only revolutionary figure admired equally by Nationalists and Communists alike. And it should be noted here that Sun Yet Sen strongly believed that the only way the Chinese could rid themselves of Manchurian dictatorship was by adopting the Modernist culture of the West that the Manchurian's utterly loathed and feared.That, too, is paradoxical. To regain a traditional (pre-Manchurian) Chinese identity meant for Sun Yet sen adoption of a post-Manchurian Modernity - which, unfortunately, as all now know, looks an awful lot like the US. Which is perhaps why the originally intended climax of this series of films was to be Once Upon a Time in China and America (a plan disrupted by personal disagreements between Jet Li and Tsui Hark).Well, in any event - does the viewer have to know all this to enjoy the film? No; the film is constructed to work on its own as a glance back at an historic moment of decision which could only be completed in another decade. Thus its sense of incompleteness and hanging threads is actually part of the very fabric of the story.By the way - hopefully you will watch this film a second time - please note how much Tsui Hark accomplishes on what must have been a comparatively small budget! I mean, he's only got a couple back lot sound-stages, but he manages to reconstruct an entire world of 19th century China for us - that's really quite amazing!