Once Upon a Time in China and America [Blu-ray]

It was nice to see the old gang together again, but this movie was by far the worst in the series. Because it was made for a Chinese-speaking audience, the acting skills of the English-speaking actors was irrelevant, and in most cases it shows. English Asian film authority Bey Logan always laments the poor acting of English-speaking actors in Chinese-language films, and this movie is no exception.Acting aside, the story itself meanders and makes little sense. [SPOILER ALERT!] Jet Li's character suffers amnesia and is taken in by local Native-Americans, doesn't learn a word of their language, marries a pretty Native-American girl, gets his memory back, returns to his Chinese comrades fighting the bad whities without a second thought to his whole Native-American experience, which could be a life-changing except that it all seemed to happen over the course of a day. The only point seemed to be to give his Chinese fiancée something to be jealous about.I was very disappointed. I was hoping to see turn-of-the-century San Francisco, a hotbed of oppression against Chinese 100 years ago. Or the building of the trans-Atlantic railway which exploited cheap Chinese labor and then sent them all back to China. But none of that. Just a hohum tale of small-town bigotry. An important story to tell, no doubt, but it could have been told much better.

I see the reviews are pretty evenly scattered from 1 star to 5 stars and I certainly understand that, its completely subjective. If you are not already a fan of Hong Kong martial arts movies, you are likely to find a lot of fault with this movie, although you'll still be awe of the Jet Li's fight sequences.However if you already are a fan of the genre, this is a terrific movie. I think the first HK movie I saw years back was Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master". Jet Li plays the same character although the movies couldn't be more different. Also they used the same theme music, although obviously a different version. Both are great movies in there own way, Drunken Master highlighting Jackie Chan's clownish style, Once Upon a Time in China shining with Jet's Li's charisma and graceful movements.The opening sequence alone, with the theme song playing and the hundreds of men moving through their Tai Chi sequence is worth the price of the DVD to me (although I loved all of it). It is the Cantonese version of the theme with George Lam that I don't get tired of listening to. The Mandarin version is sung by Jackie Chan, and just isn't quite as powerful for me.If you are new to Hong Kong movies, try to look past some of the cheesy bits and the cartoonish westerners, all of this is typical of the genre. But there is plenty to enjoy here if you look past that.

Simply the worst movie ever made. First, know that the cover image is a copy from the original movie "Once upon a time in China" which is actually one of the greatest martial arts movies ever made. This travesty is attempting to ride the wake and trick viewers into watching. I can't believe Jet Li was a part of it.

Finally got this movie on DVD, the 4th Wong Fei Hung film for Jet in the series. We can finally hear his real voice. Glad to have this in my collection.

It was an interesting movie which did show how the orientals were treated at that time. I guess it was also a comedy.

Thank you!

good

Watched this movie as a kid, and for the longest time I couldn't remember the movie name, couldn't find it, wasn't sure if it was just a dream from a long time ago (just like Jet Li in the movie lol)THEN AMAZON RECOMMENDS THIS GEM FROM MY CHILDHOOD TO ME, thank you amazon, made my day!

The story line plods at the beginning, I'm not going to give the story line or plot, what there is of it, because it doesn't make any difference to what is the forth and worst film in the trilogy. Borrow it off a friend if they have it... but don't bother buying it.It's completely in the style of a B movie Saturday matinee, an extreme cliche of one, or at least what the director thought it should be.Sammo Hung is better than this and has made some excellent films, but his direction really sucks at times and don't get me started on the overload of closeups and excessive cuts or the roaming camera work in the Indian village. I stopped this film a few times It irritated me that much, but I did watch it all; and Yes I wanted to shoot the Billy the Kid character, from his first scene, it kinda of set the tone for the rest of the film.Spoiler alert.... Jet Li's character looses his memory then gets it back, I didn't...... Don't Buy!You still need to watch bad films to see how great others are!

Once Upon a time in China & America Bluray release, I was abit concerned in buying this as I didn't see any other reviews about it, just the dvd version. I was very disappointed with the dvd so I kept my fingers crossed that this was going to be a good improvement, and it was. The video and audio is nicely re-mastered, a huge improvement over how it used to be, just little noticeable grain.To my knowledge Germany is the only country (between uk and usa) to release this on bluray with English audio as amazon wasn't showing up any others.The movie starts as soon as you put the disc in, no menu's, no copyright warnings, I actually love this, no waiting around or pressing buttons. You may have to switch to English audio past the Mandarin, Chinese and German, or choose which you'd like.Theres only German subs, which is quite a problem as when using the English audio only half the movie is in English and the other half is in Cantonese.Special Features will play straight after the movie, "The Making of" with forced English subs for 25 minutes, photo stills, trailers etc.Good Release for my collection, 5 stars would of been English subs :)

The story itself is very bad, if there even is a real story.My advice would be to watch the 4:3 letterbox original version (and zoom in so the side blackbars disappear but not the upper/lower blackbars).. Why? because the 'anamorphic' widescreen seems to be taken from a 4:3 broadcast tape and 'pan & scanned' to 16:9, so you'll miss A LOT of picture (the 4:3 broadcast tape is already a Pan & scan from the movie), yes the picture quality is a bit less (not much though) and you get some funny chinese/english subtitles and only 2.0 sound, but at least you get to see all the moves as they where filmed..It's sad they didn't make a good transfer like the hongkong legends versions, but I also see there is a german BLURAY of this movie out now, so I would advice you to go and buy that one instead..For some reason they never released parts 4 & 5 (where the main character wasn't played by Jet Li), but then again you won't feel like you missed anything..

I had this on video it's not a great film but if you have the once apon a time in China box set then it kinda gives it closure all beit utter nonsense like how did a cowboy learn Chinese martial arts? But the fighting scenes are not to bad But that said I'd only recommend it to die hard fans of Jet Li

well what can you expect, its Jet Li, quick delivery, great film and in good quality, another classic flick :)only issue was that it was full screen and it felt like i wasnt able to view the whole picture of the film, it felt like someone zoomed in all the wat throughout the film, but like i said, great film, maybe i got a crappy copy