After three installments of Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China films, star Jet Li left the series, apparently due to disputes with Tsui and his production company Film Workshop, and promptly turned around and played the character he played in the OUATIC series, Wong Fei-hung, for Wong Jing's Workshop. This struck me a little as being like Christopher Reeve playing Superman for a lower-budget studio, but the parallel does not quite stick. Wong Fei-hung is not a proprietary fictional character, but a man who lived in the late Qing and early Republican eras in southern China, a practitioner of Chinese medicine and teacher of Hung Gar kung fu whose reputation as a nationalist folk-hero blossomed after his death in 1924, first through serialized novels and, starting in the late forties, on the silver screen. Wong is the most durable and beloved hero in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and is also possibly world cinema's most filmed character: Kwan Tak-hing, the movies' first Wong, played him in nearly a hundred films during his career, though Western viewers probably are more familiar with Jackie Chan's revisionist take on the character in the Drunken Master series.
As the Spielberg of Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Hark brought Wong and the martial arts film into the age of big-budget blockbusters with the OUATIC series, showing Wong Fei-hung battling corrupt Qing dynasty officials, foreign profiteers and spies, and nativist fanatics while confronting the changes sweeping China at the time: Western influence, technology, manners, and ideals, and considering how these changes would affect the Chinese national character. Wong Jing is in many respects at the opposite end of the spectrum from Tsui, a screenwriter, producer and director whose taste for unabashed exploitation has earned him friends and enemies the world over, and 1993's Last Hero In China is not nearly as ambitious or as lavish as the films it apes. Jet Li played Wong Fei-hung for Tsui as a relatively youthful but serious man, full of Confucian gravity and sternness, and for Wong Jing he does essentially the same, while adapting the hero subtly to Wong's predilections for over-the-top humor and silliness.
As the film opens, Wong is looking for a new place for his clinic, Po Chi Lam, as students and patients fill the old place to bursting and a notice of a three-fold rent hike comes in. His two senior students, the doughty Foon (Leung Ka-yan) and buck-toothed So (Dicky Cheung), arrange for a spacious new building for the clinic with a man who happens to have the given name Wong Sifu, who admires Wong and would like to learn kung fu with him. Unfortunately, this admiring "Mass Tar Wong" is a brothel-keeper whose establishment, to Wong Fei-hung's embarrassment, is next door to the new Po Chi Lam. But this is the least of Wong Fei-hung's worries, as a heretical sect of monks, with the aid of a local Qing official (Chai Ngong-kau) who is actually a plant loyal to the rebellious nativist Boxer association, kidnap women and traffick them to Southeast Asia to benefit the Boxers, and children are being deafened by a poisonous patent medicine marketed by unscrupulous Westerners.
It isn't necessary to be familiar with the OUATIC series to enjoy this film, but it helps. As tongue in cheek as the OUATIC series was earnest, Last Hero In China, part knock-off, part parody, has fun with the corrupt Qing officials, profiteering Westerners, and nativist fanatics of the series, as well as Wong's upright, almost priggish character and the familiar Wong Fei-hung theme (originally a Cantonese traditional song, developed into a stirring anthem for the series), and especially Wong's famous mastery of the acrobatic spectacle, the Lion Dance: having been humiliated in a Lion Dance competition not by another lion, but by a group led by Qing Legate Officer Lui (played with Simon Legree-ish gusto by Chai Gnong-kau) dressed as a giant fire-breathing centipede and deafened by accidental ingestion of a poisonous Western patent medicine, he escapes to the country to regroup and attempt a cure for his deafness. Inspired by watching a chicken in a farmyard catching bugs, he returns for the most memorable set-piece of the film, defeating the centipede with his new Rooster Style of kung fu complete with wings, claws and beak (the Chinese title of the film is more or less literally "Wong Fei-hung's Iron Rooster Vs. Centipede").
Most of my initial exposure to Jet Li's work has been in his more or less straight-ahead action-hero roles (the OUATIC series, Bodyguard from Beijing, High Risk), roles which displayed his athletic talents but were often weak on characterization. He is capable of a boyish charm when he wants to display it, but he often comes across as being impatient with frivolity. Fortunately, I am beginning to discover the lighter side of Li, and the rooster scene, which segues into a final "drunken boxing" throwdown with Chai Ngong-kau, is a wonderful send-up which he plays to the hilt. As I go through my DVD collection, you can probably expect to read more about Li's lighter side here.
Last Hero in China does not pretend to have the resources available to Tsui in his series, and the film looks it, with the lack of lavish sets covered with that ubiquitous early-nineties style of lower-budget filmmaking consisting of wide-angle, fast-moving camerawork, saturated color and expressionistic lighting. The film does have a number of well-known names in the supporting roles: Anita Yuen plays one of Pimp Wong's girls, with Cheung Man as a young woman from the north who has come to Canton in search of her lost sister, and Gordon Liu Chia-hui as head of the monks. Action direction is provided by Yuen Woo-ping, whose penchant for wirework is given full rein here, giving the action scenes an over-the-top quality in keeping with the general madcap tenor of the film.
As the Spielberg of Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Hark brought Wong and the martial arts film into the age of big-budget blockbusters with the OUATIC series, showing Wong Fei-hung battling corrupt Qing dynasty officials, foreign profiteers and spies, and nativist fanatics while confronting the changes sweeping China at the time: Western influence, technology, manners, and ideals, and considering how these changes would affect the Chinese national character. Wong Jing is in many respects at the opposite end of the spectrum from Tsui, a screenwriter, producer and director whose taste for unabashed exploitation has earned him friends and enemies the world over, and 1993's Last Hero In China is not nearly as ambitious or as lavish as the films it apes. Jet Li played Wong Fei-hung for Tsui as a relatively youthful but serious man, full of Confucian gravity and sternness, and for Wong Jing he does essentially the same, while adapting the hero subtly to Wong's predilections for over-the-top humor and silliness.
As the film opens, Wong is looking for a new place for his clinic, Po Chi Lam, as students and patients fill the old place to bursting and a notice of a three-fold rent hike comes in. His two senior students, the doughty Foon (Leung Ka-yan) and buck-toothed So (Dicky Cheung), arrange for a spacious new building for the clinic with a man who happens to have the given name Wong Sifu, who admires Wong and would like to learn kung fu with him. Unfortunately, this admiring "Mass Tar Wong" is a brothel-keeper whose establishment, to Wong Fei-hung's embarrassment, is next door to the new Po Chi Lam. But this is the least of Wong Fei-hung's worries, as a heretical sect of monks, with the aid of a local Qing official (Chai Ngong-kau) who is actually a plant loyal to the rebellious nativist Boxer association, kidnap women and traffick them to Southeast Asia to benefit the Boxers, and children are being deafened by a poisonous patent medicine marketed by unscrupulous Westerners.
It isn't necessary to be familiar with the OUATIC series to enjoy this film, but it helps. As tongue in cheek as the OUATIC series was earnest, Last Hero In China, part knock-off, part parody, has fun with the corrupt Qing officials, profiteering Westerners, and nativist fanatics of the series, as well as Wong's upright, almost priggish character and the familiar Wong Fei-hung theme (originally a Cantonese traditional song, developed into a stirring anthem for the series), and especially Wong's famous mastery of the acrobatic spectacle, the Lion Dance: having been humiliated in a Lion Dance competition not by another lion, but by a group led by Qing Legate Officer Lui (played with Simon Legree-ish gusto by Chai Gnong-kau) dressed as a giant fire-breathing centipede and deafened by accidental ingestion of a poisonous Western patent medicine, he escapes to the country to regroup and attempt a cure for his deafness. Inspired by watching a chicken in a farmyard catching bugs, he returns for the most memorable set-piece of the film, defeating the centipede with his new Rooster Style of kung fu complete with wings, claws and beak (the Chinese title of the film is more or less literally "Wong Fei-hung's Iron Rooster Vs. Centipede").
Most of my initial exposure to Jet Li's work has been in his more or less straight-ahead action-hero roles (the OUATIC series, Bodyguard from Beijing, High Risk), roles which displayed his athletic talents but were often weak on characterization. He is capable of a boyish charm when he wants to display it, but he often comes across as being impatient with frivolity. Fortunately, I am beginning to discover the lighter side of Li, and the rooster scene, which segues into a final "drunken boxing" throwdown with Chai Ngong-kau, is a wonderful send-up which he plays to the hilt. As I go through my DVD collection, you can probably expect to read more about Li's lighter side here.
Last Hero in China does not pretend to have the resources available to Tsui in his series, and the film looks it, with the lack of lavish sets covered with that ubiquitous early-nineties style of lower-budget filmmaking consisting of wide-angle, fast-moving camerawork, saturated color and expressionistic lighting. The film does have a number of well-known names in the supporting roles: Anita Yuen plays one of Pimp Wong's girls, with Cheung Man as a young woman from the north who has come to Canton in search of her lost sister, and Gordon Liu Chia-hui as head of the monks. Action direction is provided by Yuen Woo-ping, whose penchant for wirework is given full rein here, giving the action scenes an over-the-top quality in keeping with the general madcap tenor of the film.
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