#A CHINESE GHOST STORY ENGLISH DUB MOVIE#
Before Once Upon a Time in China Li was staring in one movie a year, after though he was in 2-5 films a year throughout the 90s. Jet Li’s career certainly took off after this film. At least for ‘Tiger’ played by Steve Tartalia. This film is a classic! The acting is very well done, the sets and Chinese costumes are great, the western costumes are not late 1800s but look more like late 1700s. The character Kam Shan-chu (played by Fan Siu-wong) pretty much played the identical role. Sound familiar? It should for anyone who has watched Ip Man. One of those is Master Yim Chun Tung who has come from the North to set up a school in Foshan and challenges anyone to make a name for himself. The film deals with the growing concern of foreign influences, the degradation of the Chinese government, as well as problems with the locals. The story is about the legendary folk hero Wong Fei Hung (1847-1924) who runs a traditional medical clinic in Foshan, China. The film won many awards including Best Director and Best Action Choreography. When the movie came out there was not much interest in Martial Arts, Wuxia, or historical films and Once Upon a Time in China is credited as starting the trend that led to so many wonderful 90s movies. I think Director Tsui Hark did a fine job balancing the story and action to keep the film from feeling dragged out. Once Upon a Time in China is fairly long for a martial arts film at 134 minutes. So for me this was the first time I got to watch the film with the original language. I’m pleased with the boxset as it offers the original Cantonese audio track as well as the English Dub. There are more recent box sets and even a Blu-ray however they are only available for North America. I recently found a very good deal on the trilogy box set by the Hong Kong Legends distributors.
I used to own it on VHS video tape but I sold all my video tapes when I moved to the UK.
It has been over ten years since I’ve seen Once Upon a Time in China.