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The weakest of Jet Lis OUATIC appearances...

For the first time since Once Upon A Time In China 3, Jet Li resumes the title role of Wong Fei-Hung, the Chinese hero. This time he has travelled to America -- and the Wild West -- together with 13th Aunt Peony (Rosamund Kwan) and Clubfoot Seven (Xin-Xin Xiong). During an early encounter with Indians, an accident causes Wong Fei-Hung to lose his memory and become separated from his group. On recovery he notices that despite his amnesia he can still perform martial arts with his usual devastating effect. Now he must somehow communicate with a tribe when he only knows Cantonese, and try and get them to help him regain his memory and rejoin his friends. This is actually not particularly great, despite the direction being by the normally-brilliant Sammo Hung (Eastern Condors, Wheels On Meals, Dragons Forever) and the producer being Tsui Hark, who had involvement with the other entries in the series. The Wild West setting is comparatively murky compared to the lush colourings in the Chinese-set predecessors (although Ive not at the time of writing seen the entries between this and OUATIC3, which featured Chiu Man Cheuk [The Black Sheep Affair, Body Weapon] in the title role, so I dont know how they look), and many of the sections of the martial arts scenes have been undercranked to stupidly high levels, which I thought was a bit of a shame, as Jet Li and Xin-Xin Xiong dont really need to have a speed boost. I expect that the looming 1997 handover, coupled with the comparative lack of speed of the westerners, may have forced them to resort to this. Sadly, not a classic. If you can, try before you buy. Contains the usual option of watching it with English dubbing or Cantonese Language with English Subtitles (sadly they are the occasionally-poor-quality Hong Kong subs rather than the remastered ones, so expect some unintentional humour through dodgy translations).

A major disappointment from the great Jet Li

Though this film is enjoyable enough, it is hampered by Sammo Hungs woeful direction, and some of the lamest "baddies" yet committed to screen. Still, Jet Li is as good as ever, even if Hungs constant (and misguided) use of close-up often prevents us from seeing exactly what it is he is doing. In short, dont expect this movie to scale the heights OUATIC I, II and II did, but if youre a Jet fan, you might want to check this out.

Some brilliant fighting scenes

Like all the Once upon a time in China series this film has some great action scenes. My favourite scene was the fight between Wong Fei Hung (Jet Li) and Seven (Yueng Pan Pan) when Wong Fei Hung had lost his memory. The only thing that let this film down was the plot as I sometimes felt that it was the fighting scenes that kept the film interesting. Still, one I would recommend getting.