Once Upon a Time in China Part 2

Starring:Jet Li, Ka-Kui Ho, Siu Chung Mok, Rosamund Kwan, Donnie Yen, Xin Xin Xiong, Paul Fonoroff, Yee Kwan Yan, David Chiang
Director: Hark Tsui
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Actor and martial arts maestro Jet Li and iconoclastic director Tsui Hark revisit historical China and legendary folk hero Wong Fei Hung in the second installment to the wildly popular Once Upon a Time in China film series (or better yet, "serials"). The main players include Li as Wong Fei Hung, Rosamund Kwan as his beloved but Westernized Auntie 13, and their clumsy sidekick Foon (Max Mok). China is in a period of political unrest. Dr. Sun Yat Sen is beginning to gain momentum behind his Nationalist party. A Qing minister (played with intensity by skilled fighter Donnie Yen) firmly carries out his job as police enforcer and a crazed cult called the White Lotus Sect has decided to take matters into their own hands by bullying citizens and destroying everything foreign. Wong and his crew find themselves at odds with the minister and the Sect, who have more in common than they initially let on. It all leads to some high-octane action scenes, including an all-out table-stacking and airborne brawl with the Sect (in which Wong uncharacteristically goes a little berserk himself) and a one-on-one matchup between Li and Yen. Tsui juggles the multilayered plot while Li juggles his opponents in a perfectly serviceable epic that is perhaps not as significant as the first Once Upon a Time in China but is solid kung fu nourishment for fans. --Shannon Gee

Customer Reviews:

Even Better Than The Original.......2006-06-18

Jet Li once again reprises his role as Master Wong. OUaTIC2 takes the first film and makes it even better. I like the continuation of the characters this movie has. Things have changed since the first film and change even more during it. This introduces the White Lotus society as a mystical force that is demanding that the Westerners leave China, by any means. The action sequences of this film out do and are better than what we see in the original film. This movie also leaves behind the realism and goes more towards a fictional story, it even says that a lot of the film is fictional at the beginning. Overall, really great and if you like the first film, you will LOVE this. It is even better!

Simple but stylish.......2006-06-18

I loved the openning scene. It's quite stylish. The story is simple but effective.

I saw a few compliant in here but as a Chinese I thought I'd give my 2 cents here. I feel that the movie evokes a deep emotion for me as how a classic hero would do in the most difficult times. When their country is surrounded by multiple external invasion forces and oppressed by it's own corrupted govenment, your fellow countrymen mostly cared for themselves and some are even preying on their own for profits, few are still willing to fight for a better future. The hero in this story is not just Wong but those two men who are willing to give up their lives to fight for their countrymen. Wong, again, caught up in the middle of uprising and must utilize his kung fu skill to battle for his beliefs and his love.

I think this is the best of the entire series. If you are only to get one of the series, please get this one.

rent it if you must but don't believe everything you read... this included of course.

2 stars for the story a 4.5 for the action, 5 stars for the stick fight and for jet li going off on EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......2006-04-03

This movie is really freaking weird. I am always surprised to see that this is most peoples favorite entry into the series, and while i would put it at # 3, it still rocks. The story yiou can really tell is just there so they could call it a movie. But watching jet li go off on like 30 people is really really cool. It is weird that they have clubfoot doing all the flip doubles for jet just like in the first movie, so when they fight eachother towards the end, you can see clubfoot doing the flips for himself and jet!!!!! It is really cool if you notice it.

And that brings me to a point I wanted to bring up. I have a huge problem with tsui hark, and even though OUATIC part 1 is one of the top 10 movie I have ever seen of any genre, he really limits some of his actors capabilities, at least when it comes to their martial arts abilities. Yuen biuo I think did one flip and had like 10 or 11 seconds to exchange blows with people. Xio Xio Xhiong???-very unsure of this spelling so i will just call him clubfoot. I have about 5 movies with him in it, and he is one of the best screen fighters I have ever seen. Why tsui hark decides to not show off all of his stuff really pisses me off. I mean jet looks good like he always does, better in fact, but why can't he make clubfoot look badass, I mean this guy is like the freaking horse of the first 2 rpojects, if they didn't have him the movie would have taken a hell of a lot longer and we may not have even had that spectacular ladder fight. So tsui hark finally gave him his chance in part 3 and he showed that he was the bleepin man, but we also found out that he has SUPERB acting skills. It is just too bad that part 3 really sucked, but if you take jat and clubfoot out of the mix, you would have had like a rosumand kwan lion dance or something, it would have been really weird, I don't know if it could have been worse, but it might have been more interesting. Go ahead and watch the whoel series and you will see that Hark is just a really hit and miss type director, I mean my god, look at jet li's the master, he's like , so i figured out in born to defence that I can't direct and now I figured out I can't produce either. And black mask 2, man tsui hark, i would be here all day if i named all of your bad stuff, but i would be here equally long if i was forced to name all of your good ones.

Also amazon lists this as 113 minutes and that is the full version. But I would suggest that you get the trilogy set, I got it used for 7.99, and would have piad like 30 bucks for the first 2, but the 3rd one is really only good for like backround music, YOU GOTTA LOVE THIS MUSIC, IT IS SERIOUSLY MY FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME. IT IS SUCH A NICE CHANGE FROM HEARIGN THAT SAME FREAKING STOCK MUSIC THAT WOO-PING AND JOSEOPH KUO AND EVERYBODY!!!! ELSE WOULD USE.

JUST SO YOU PEOPLE KNOW, THIS IS JAMES WONG WHO COMPOSED THIS AND UNFORTUNATELY HE PASSED ON A COUPLE YEARS AGO, BUT LEFT BEHIND A TRUE LEGACY. SO YOU GUYS AND GALS!! MAY REMEMBER HIM AS THE GOVERNER WITH LIKE 9 WIVES, NOT ONLY WAS HE A BRILLIANT ACTOR BUT A COMPOSER WHO OWNS THE TITLE OF MY FAVORITE SONG. AND IT IS PRETTY HARD TO RIVAL STUFF LIEK SABBATH AND HENDRIX AND JETHRO, SO I GOTTA GIVE IT UP TO THE LATE GREAT JAMES WONG.

ALSO LIKE I SAID EARLIER GET THE TRILOGY CAUSE IF THIS IS YOUR FAV IN THE SERIES, THEN YOU NEED THIS. PART 1 HAS DECENT SOUND AND EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT PICTURE AND AWESOME!!!!!! SUBTITLES. BUT THE SECOND DISC IN THE SET IS FAR SUPERIOR TO THE FIRST, IT HAS FREAKING BOOMING 5.1 SOUND AND STILL THE SAME GREAT PICTURE QUALITY. I GOTTA ADMIT THAT I LOVE TO HEAR DONNIES VOICE SO GET THIS IF YOU WANNA SEE THAT STICK FIGHT IN A PERFECTO WIDESREENED PRESENTATION.

Must have for Jet-Li fans.......2005-08-21

Very,very good movie, on top of that it's a great
martial arts flick. Any Jet-Li fan needs to have
this in their library.

A different reversal of roles, he plays a doctor
who looks like a monk helping people and fighting
occupation over territories in China.

His character Wei-Fong is well layed out, he has
some flaws, but he is great when the time comes.

The martial arts stunts are really top notch,
I can even list all the stunts but the fights
with the White Lotus bunch is outstanding.

Pretty good acting too all around.

truly kung fu master in all round kung fu history.......2005-02-02

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.

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