Last Hero in China
1/5/01
Review
Format: DVD
Stars: Jet Li, Leung Kar Yan, Lau Kar Fai (Gordon Liu), Adam Cheng, Nat Chan

(From the box) - "Wong Fei Hung investigates the reason why lots of village girls have gone missing and discvover that it's organized by the law enforcer, a big fight ensures between Wong and the bad guys. In the end, Wong manages to overcome the law enforcer."

A very lightweight movie, this is Jet's second to last Wong Fei Hung tribute, and I'm not entirely impressed. I had been hyped on this film everywhere I went, and I get it and I think to myself, "I'm never gonna listen to another person again." There are a few moments, but overall, well...

It starts out with Chung Fa and his 2 goons trying to get a train ticket but are attacked by officers. What's misleading here is that there isn't an ounce of wirework, and everything is filmed like an original HK film. I'm pleased so far. Chung Fa and the two men beat up some guards quickly and then fight Jet Li, where it starts getting rediculous when Jet's kicking a guy in the head way faster than is possible, obviously a fake leg. But I can let that pass because it's a pre-fight move, and I was assured that the fake stuff in this movie wouldn't interfere with the fight scenes. Then they all get weapons, and Jet just kicks them around and nothing interesting happens.



Adam Cheng is doing a Tiger style it seems, and it just gets corny where he slaps his hands against the tiles and they come up. This would be ok if it looked real, but it's just stupid because he swims along the ground afterwords. Why did they bother doing this? Afterwords a prisoner comes to fight Jet, and he just kicks him around, and flies up in his chair too, which is incredibly fake. Adam Cheng jumps way up and kicks him on the top of the head. All of this is fake looking to the max.



Leung Kar Yan, who is Jet's assistant, finds a woman in a box at a harbor and starts commotion. So he gets in a dispute with Adam Cheng, which is a 10 second long fight between the two of them that has nothing fake except stunt doubles. It's short and undramatic, but Kar Yan still does his own fighting, and does it well, and for not having any real martial arts training previous, he's still impressive.



Cheung Man, a woman in case you didn't know, fights, but it's rediculous as expected. They use wires on her and her small kicks aren't impressive. Bunch of bs.



Two guys infiltrate Adam Cheng's and Gordon Liu's hideout, and it's a wirefu massacre, and it's short. Not worth mentioning I guess. Liu does nothing.



Some monks try to kidnap a girl, and Nat Chan and Kar Yan defend, which has some actual martial arts. They use Tiger and Crane, which are in Hung Gar, for a second and fall out of it. Jet comes in a kicks a guy. That's the end of this scene. Another short one.



So Jet goes to see Gordon Liu, and it's on this catwalk thing in the middle of space. You're expecting wirework, and you get it after Jet does some nice looking kicks on the catwalk against some goons, and then a No Shadow Kick that goes 100 feet. Liu shows up and momentarily they have some good looking hand to hand work, oh wait it only lasts for 4 hits. Then they fly, but Liu drops down for some more hand to hand stuff, which is short, and they fly some more. I can't stand this.



Oh and some really lame wire assisted Lion Dancing, which at times breaks into normal lion dancing, but then back into wirework. They're later attacked by a centipede held by 10 men or so.



Kar Yan and Nat Chan attack Liu in his house, and there's some real martial arts in the beginning of it for a few moments, but then it turns into wirework yet again. And it's not very well edited either. Later they do a tiny bit of Tiger and Crane, which looks good, but it kills Liu.



Jet gets in a group fight which has standard Jet stuff with him kicking guys who can't defend themselves, and they shoot arrows at him but he's too fast. I didn't want to bother with a screen capture because I'm getting sick of this already. Sorry.

And we get more centipede action, and Jet comes in dressed like a chicken this time and tears it up. Nothing special. More wirework. Oh and I don't think this is Jet Li we're seeing here the whole time. He tends to put his head down A LOT. Then they attack him with swords, Cheung Man comes in with wire kicks, and Jet chases Adam Cheng into a hut, which is where the final fight is.



What happens now is predictable. Jet does some flying around and kicks with the guy way at the top of this shack, and then there are some bursts of real martial arts which aren't done by Jet at all, and I'm starting to figure this out. Jet Li fans don't really give a damn about his martial arts skills. They like seeing him either fly or block a kick in slow motion. They like crap like this. So anwyays, Jet starts drinking alcohol after his no shadow kick is ruined by some steel armour, and does some drunken boxing. Well, I think I could do it better personally. He doesn't look drunk, he doesn't act drunk, AND HE DOESN'T FIGHT DRUNK. It's not great. There's more wirework, more stupid nonsense, and a few flashes of some real drunken moves which don't nearly make up for the rest of this crap movie.



As you might be able to tell, this isn't my cake. There's hardly anything I like about it, and every fight, since it was silly, wasn't dramatic and had no real meaning behind it so I found no interest in the action. I expected some fighting that wasn't influenced by wirework. Well, there's some, about 40 seconds of it total, which wasn't worth my buck. I can't believe that Jet still hasn't been fully tapped, except for a few movies like Dragon Fight and the Shaolin Temple movies. But everywhere else, it seems like his moves are ALL THE SAME, everything he does is the same because the choreographers say, "Well people like it when Jet makes this face, so Jet, make this face" instead of "You know, Jet can do 5 airtracks in a row followed by some good chain kicks, so Jet, do that, and then some, because YOU CAN." And since Jet's such a hot commodity, he can't do half of this stuff because no one will allow it, so we see some guy in the distance doing really good looking martial arts, and it isn't even him. I'm sorry to say that Jet's career hasn't treated him too fairly. The guy should ditch America, ditch Yuen Wo Ping, ditch Wong Jing, ditch everybody and start making his own martial arts movies with the choreographing talents of nobodies who can stir up a good fight without thinking about who's involved. THEN, Jet can act it out, because HE CAN. But this isn't gonna happen. Jet will continue being in movies that are aimed at people who don't give a damn about his physical talents, like Romeo Must Die (which should have failed but didn't), Tai Chi Master (though he did Tai Chi at the end), and I hear he's supposed to be in The Matrix 2. I'm dreading that like taxes. Imagine. Jet doing wirework, next to Keanu. Ugh. All they need is some Crystal Hunt music and it could be a horror movie!.

Anyways, back on track. This movie has nothing to offer except these short bursts of real martial arts, which are so uncommon I wonder why people even consider this a martial arts movie. It should be under the genre "Aeronautics".

1/5

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