Once Upon a Time in China (1991)

Rated R, but...why?  Okay, there's a fair amount of blood, especially when it comes to the gun violence.  But the language is pretty tame.  There's a bit about human trafficking, and that's awful, but it's done in a way that doesn't seem particularly exploitative.  The movie really makes clear that the relationship between the two main characters, while the two are related, it is not by blood.  That's always a moment.  The movie plays a little bit up on stereotypes about the West, but we probably deserve a lot of it.  Still, very shocked by an R-rating for this movie.

DIRECTOR: Hark Tsui

Do you know how much I want to get this blog done before I have to figure out lunch for the kids?  I'm about to hit another perfect storm of having to write film blogs and I having this one behind me before I run out of time would make my life significantly easier.  But I also know that having to watch five kids and making words make sense is a Herculean effort and I'm not sure how much I have in me.

I swear, I'm not in the mood for Hong Kong fight choreography movies.  It's not one of my buttons.  It's not like I'm constantly looking for the next Kung Fu film.  But when I got the Jackie Chan box set for one event and the Once Upon a Time in China box set for another gift, it tends to lead all of my blog entries to imply that I'm an afficianado on Kung Fu films.  I am not.  Because of these box sets, I have seen more than my fair share of these movies.  I don't dislike them by any standard.  But I will say that I should point out that Kung Fu movies, while being fun from time-to-time, simply are another genre to me.  It's like Westerns.  I'm not into Westerns.  However, if there is a really good Western, I'll preach that forever.  Is Once Upon a Time in China a really good Kung Fu movie?  I mean, sort of?

We're entering the '90s with my Kung Fu viewing.  I'm actually completely uninformed about this era of filmmaking when it comes to Kung Fu outside of what I picked up from American trends of the late '90s when these actors emigrated to Hollywood.  Like, I know Jet Li.  I've always associated him with bad guys in movies.  I'm even more ashamed to admit that it is because I'm intimately knowledgable about Lethal Weapon 4, a movie I probbaly can't revisit...ever.  (I don't know.  I've been nervous about diving back into the Lethal Weapon movies, despite owning them.  Every time I think that Mel Gibson is trying to redeem himself, he goes on a podcast and says something else gross.) But Jet Li became a bit of an icon in the United States in the '90s and 2000s.  It's cool to see him headlining a film, especially given that he is an incredibly talented martial artist.  So me going into Once Upon a Time in China from a perspective of someone who has secondhand knowledge of this actor and his talents is wildly impressed by the choreography of this movie.  I said a lot of similar stuff when it came to breaking down the Jackie Chan collection. (Note: I have one more to watch in that set and then I can finally move these movies to the Collections page.) 

I'm also kind of gobsmacked by the aesthetic of the movie.  There was almost something nostalgic (for a movie I haven't seen before!) for a movie that looked like this.  I forgot about that kind of Touchstone Pictures / Dimension Films epic vibe that movies from this era had.  Part of it was that these movies were given proper budges.  Once Upon a Time in China has money behind it.  I'd like to slow my momentum by saying that money doesn't necessarily equal good.  But it helps forgive some things sometimes.  On the other hand, while the movie has this almost epic scope to the film, the movie kind of loses a lot of its fun because it doesn't feel like the movie is being made by a bunch of scrappy filmmakers who really want to make something special.  There's almost a bit too much studio attached to this.  (Sure, this is Hong Kong.  But I also tend to like bands' garage albums more than their overproduced stuff.) 

But the biggest problem with the fact that this movie looks epic and polished as heck is that it has real weird tone.  Now, part of me is totally willing to accept that cultural values might be a thing going on here.  While I can wrap my head around the fact that American action movies tend to quip and joke with the best of them, often the subject matter reflects what is going on here.  For the first half of the movie, I wasn't sure if this was a comedy or a drama.  The problem comes with the story being about a heavy issue for the Chinese people.  (Because the film is called Once Upon a Time in China, I'm going to avoid referring this as an issue for the people of Hong Kong.  If this is a story about historical China, let's leave the focus there.)  The film opens up with a French frigate opening fire on a dragon dance (which I learned all about because of the last Jackie Chan movie I watched.  It's a shame that I don't remember the title...).Throughout the film, while not the central conflict, the setting constantly reminds us of the dangers of colonialism.  

If anything, I had a hard time fitting my politics within the film.  While the movie is rightly anti-colonialism and I'm all on board for that, that also means that it embraces isolationism and traditionalism.  It's a weird thing.  With the story taking place when it does, it makes sense that a Chinese story wants to talk about how the influence of the West was toxic on the people of China.  But this is a movie made in 1991.  I can't help but think that this is a piece of propaganda stoking fears about international relations.  I suppose both arguments are right.  And I don't want to wash Western influence with a nuanced brush, but these Westerners are so over-the-top evil that I'm surprised that I could take the movie even slightly seriously.  I don't know what it is, but I love when they get White guys to be kung-fu experts in kung-fu movies.  They're always super scary and it's always a little bit silly.  What is even more odd is that we know that Jet Li goes over to America and makes quite a career for himself in Hollywood, despite the fact that one of the central themes to Once Upon a Time in China is that America is mostly a land of fiction that doesn't offer wealth and success.   Just saying.

But where I think that Once Upon a Time in China fails is that it almost doesn't know what its story is.  It's far more about setting and frustration than a central conflict.  My goodness, having to navigate all of the characters and their motivations is an exercise in futility.  I read the Wikipedia article, wondering if there was a central story that I missed.  And honestly, not really?  The main antagonist of the film shows up pretty far in the film and almost doesn't have an origin to explain a lot of his behavior.  Now, to the film's credit, his mission does tie into the films central themes about embracing tradition.  I can't help but make the comparison to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  Wong and Yim are so focused on their old world rivalry that they lose sight on the fact that China is being taken away by gun-toting White guys.  I don't hate that.  But Yim comes across as almost silly.  Also, a lot of these guys really seem to respect Yim, but he seems like a really pathetic bad guy.  While he can do amazing Wire-Fu, he doesn't really seem to have it all together.  Foon seems to respect him and it doesn't make sense.  Foon seems to get the proper amount of attention under Wong, but he still moves over to Yim?  Yim is a guy who scrounges at the dust for some coins that fell.  He also seemed to claim that he absolutely destroyed Wong for getting one hit in when Wong was distracted.  It's really weird to make that archetype the antagonist.

Also, I don't really get a lot of chemistry between Wong and 13th Aunt.  I mean, it could be the fact that Wong calls her 13th Aunt and the movie is constantly reminding us that they are technically related, even if it is through marriage.  But Wong is kind of terrible to 13th Aunt throughout.  I'm not sure why she finds him so attractive and seems to be coming on pretty hard, considering that he doesn't really reciprocate those feelings, even though he may share them.  If anything, Wong himself is a bit of an enigma.  He's as much of a jerk as he is a hero.  But we don't really see him become vulnerable at any point in the film.  When he's upset, he lashes out and makes bad choices.  But he's also almost never happy.  That's a weird trait to have for this franchise.

Can I tell you one thing that I really enjoyed, though?  I loved, besides the fact that the Wire-Fu is top notch, that event the sidekicks to this movie are really talented fighters?  We always get the story that all of the people at the kung fu school can hold their own, but aren't amazing in their own right.  But Once Upon a Time in China builds up all of these stereotypes / archetypes like the fat guy, the nerd, the bullied --and makes all these guys incredible fighters.  I suppose this is where we get some of the stuff that we'll get from Kung Fu Panda, a franchise that doesn't do anything for me.

So I am not off the series.  I'm excited to see where this goes.  For sure, out of the five movies (that come out pretty close together!) they have to go to America, right?  Wong will be seduced by the allure of the West and he has to remember his roots, right?  I'm just taking a guess here and now.  Because this is a franchise with five movies that came out so close to each other, I'm tempted to watch these movies like The Lord of the Rings movies and treat each film as an episode in a much larger, singular story.  I mean, I might be setting myself up for disaster with that attitude, but that's just my prediction.  Anyway, it did the job.