Once Upon A Time In China III Details

Another great action packed movie, with Jet Li at the start of his fame and popularity. Great production; customs, backround and music but a very poor story & characters lines. If you are a great fan of Jet Li and martial arts you won't regret staying home, if not don't even bother cuz there iz no space for any drama here.

Marvellous

The Chinese Empress feels threatened by the influx of foreign influence on China, and decides the best way to defeat the foreigners is to cause rancor among them and to take advantage of this. To epitomizes the Chinese culture the empress decides to hold a martial arts competition, but ironically this competition causes enmity between the different martial arts schools who in a bid to become the winners of the coveted golden dragon begin killing each other.

Tsui Hark continues his story of tradition verses progress. He explores the ideas of shedding tradition and embracing progress, but at the same time also questions whether progress and technology is really what mankind needs. He shows that despite technology being wonderful and enabling mankind to do things otherwise impossible it still lacks something only found in humans which is compassion. In contrast he also shows the dark and cruel side to mankind in which case the technology seems better because it is not judgmental or fickle.

The martial arts scenes are good, although the last half hour becomes sloppy this is still an excellent film and worth adding to your Jet Li collection.