Once Upon A Time In China, Part V

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, PART V (1995)

I feel like an idiot for saying this, but it's true: Once Upon A Time In China, Part V just doesn't have nearly the freshness of Part I. Depending on how you're willing to look at it, though, this piece may beat out Part III (the last in the series to have Jet Li as Wong Fey Hong) or Part IV (the first-- and, currently, the only--- entry in the series not to be directed by Tsui Hark. ) for the coveted "third-best-in-a-five-movie-series" title. Wong Fey Hong, his students and family battle a group of horrible pirates. Tsui packs in all the OUATIC standards-- love triangles, comedic confusion between east and west cultures, some sly social commentary and a showpiece fight scene pivoting around Fey Hong and the bad guy balancing precariously on something and beating the tar out of each other--- but gone is his insanely tight pacing that previously allowed for all of these elements to happen simultaneously. Worth checking out for the social commentary and what seems to be a good-natured jab at John Woo. After a cool opening (pirates beat the tar out of some guy), I sat through the first hour of the movie bored out of my mind: Tsui has established a pretty big supporting cast by now, and he seems overly enamored of their dynamics. As they travel to a new area beseiged by pirates and end up becoming the force for law and justice, we get comedic misunderstandings, mistaken identities and a romantic triangle between Fey Hong, Aunt Yee (Rosamund Kwan from the first movie) and Aunt May (I couldn't even tell you her name). By the end of the first hour, Fey Hong and his group have taken to the high seas and captured a pirate ship. The fight scenes on the ship are little more than decent, saved only by the very decent joke of having the mild bespectacled scholar (from OUATIC, Part I) become a whiz with the handgun, sliding, flipping and shooting with a pistol in each hand. Obviously, Tsui is making an in-joke about his mild, scholastic pal (or ex-pal) John Woo (I've heard they fell out over A Better Tomorrow, Part II).

The second hour packs in a hell of a lot more. Fey Hong and co. get to the pirate island and sneak into the hideout. Here, Tsui manages to push my buttons with all sorts of great touches: a formidable female warrior (with glasses and an eyepatch! Be still, my heart), a hopping pirate elder, and a really fascinating bit of conversation that suggests where the movie's thematic interests lie.

As a disguised Fey Hong makes his way through the cavorting pirate crowd, we overhear this bit of conversation:

"San Francisco is a nice town, isn't it?"

"Not at all. I've bought a house in New York."

"I prefer Paris. Such a romantic city."

Apart from being a winning bit of humor (why wouldn't sea-roving pirates eventually become cosmopolitan sophisticates?), the conversation sounds reminiscent of those that must be had by HK filmmakers emigrating out of the country (and there are many as 1997 steadily approaches). I wonder if Tsui Hark equates the pirates in his movie, responsible for causing the people on land to suffer a famine and poverty, with the departing filmmakers (who may or may not have anything to do with the slump in the strength of the H.K. cinema). If so, the movie becomes an interesting allegory with Fey Hong and pals representing the local film market as they continue to battle and eventually beat the pirates/expatriates.

Oh, sure, maybe this is just something I pulled out of thin air to keep my mind awake in between fight sequences. After all, the John Woo character fights along with Fey Hong group and Woo himself has been in the states now for a few years (directing the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Hard To Say My Lines). But I refuse to let a few ugly facts kill one beautiful theory. Besides, Tsui, with the first three films being subtextual meditations about the creation of a new culture from the marriage of Britian and traditional Chinese, is just the type of guy to craft those kind of themes. If you don't like my theory, you can always stick with the borrowed-from- The-Seven-Samurai metaphor of rice as wealth. God knows that IS in there.

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