Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997)
Reviewed by: nomoretitanic on 2001-03-11
Summary: Painful
I refuse to believe that this is an installment of the OUATIC series, but rather, an ugly radioactive mutant offspring.

This movie hasn't the faintest idea of what America was/is like. Everything you see here is a caricature of those politically incorrect old TV shows. A caricature of a caricature. Basically this movie was saying that Chinese people are awesome, they can heal anything, they have the best food, they can kick asses, and they can even catch bullets.

A lot of Chinese movies are like that, only to be redeemed by the actions. But the actions here made it even worst. Everything is undercranked at a ridiculous rate because apparently that's how fast Chinese people really move. All the villains in this movie don't stand a chance, the cowboys would stand in their bullying boxing stances waiting for Clubfoot to take them out, the crazy Indians tried their darndest to attack Jet here only to stop dead two feet in front of Jet and waits for his kicks or something (I say "or something" here because Sammo does that amazing camera thing where he swish pans and jump cuts and blurs just to show you what a gifted director he really is.) The final fight between Jet and the Dirty Mexican/Chinese Guy in Mexican Suit is more or less the same. The Mexican tries his hardest to come at Jet Li with his Amazing Undercranked Kicks only blocked by Jet Li's own Amazing Undercranked Shadowless Kicks. The entire time it was the Mexican hurling anything and everything at Jet, even tried shooting at the poor Chinaman, but Jet kicked everything out of the way and, not making this up, bent the spacetime continuum and caught all of them lil' bullets. The entire time the evil villain kept on asking himself outloud "Just who the hell is this guy?" "Is he human?" Which was the same questions we've been asking ourselves watching this movie: he moves at the speed of 20 frames per second (that's whole four frames faster than the rest of us), he catches bullets, he doesn't remember anything, he has no feelings for anyone, he hardly even talks. R2-D2 is more human than this guy.