Cheesy, stupid movie whenever anyone is talking, but it’s also the most handsome-looking one of these movies in a while, and Jet Li is back, and his and Clubfoot’s action scenes are hot. The action is chopped up more than usual, but it works, until it doesn’t. Music is hit or miss – playing the OUATIC theme on Western instruments is cool but sometimes the composer plays a choir on a sampling keyboard, which is less cool. Wong loses his memory on a trip to America, joins a native tribe and hooks up with Agent Tammy Preston (in her only acting role outside of Twin Peaks). Sammo sure is trying some things to revive the series, sometimes successfully, but goes too broad and ends up with anti-racism for babies, nowhere near the heights of his Millionaire’s Express.

Our guys are joined by Billy (stuntman Jeff Wolfe), far right:

Long opening scene on a train where Jackie Chan’s Wong Fei-Hung runs around angering the authorities and mixing up with a spy played by the director who’s trying to stop Brits from exporting national artifacts. They get home with dad Ti Lung (the star of A Better Tomorrow until Chow got more famous) to stepmom Anita Mui, and it seems Wong and his idiot companion Tso (Ram Chiang of a recent Anita Mui biopic) are constantly bringing shame to the family (gambling addict Anita is egging him on though).

Jackie and Tso hide behind the poultry:

Meanwhile, a steel factory owner hires a new foreman to beat and burn the workers into working without overtime pay, and gets mad that Wong’s dojo is noisy, and the Brits hire the Axe Gang to kill the spy and get their stolen artifacts back. All hope is lost unless Jackie can get drunk enough to defeat everyone in sight, saving the family business and his country’s heritage. The action in this is wild.

Jackie and Anita vs. the director:

The stupidest, goofiest entry, thanks to the full line of disciples and family members from parts one through four being together for the first time – and also the most shootiest and explosionest. This time they’re fighting sea pirates, led by Elder Paco (a Yes Madam spinoff), Junior Stephen (Hard Boiled), and Elaine (The Bride with White Hair), and fortunately Katy didn’t watch this one (the pirates have an entire crate full of the severed fingers of their victims). It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

The gang:

Doctor Yang (Yu Rongguang of Supercop 2, which is a different movie from Police Story 4 even though Supercop 1 was Police Story 3) goes around in disguise acting like Disney’s Robin Hood, with assistant Orchid (Jean Wang, kicking much more ass here than as 14th Aunt), making mockeries of corrupt governor James Wong (a major songwriter, also in Twin Dragons) and his lead cop Yuen Shun-Yi (of Drunken Master). Wong Fei-hung’s dad Donnie Yen (confusingly, he’ll play the title role in the sequel) is passing through town, the governor holds his son prisoner so he’ll help them catch the righteous bandit. But of course they all team up to defeat the evil master (also the evil master of Heroic Trio the same year).

Twin monkeys:

Much action ensues. I saw this on VHS or something back in the day, but it’s extremely helpful to have seen a bunch of kung-fu movies leading up to this, getting used to their plots and moves and sound effects, to appreciate this one’s particular excellence… in context of the OUATIC sequels going slowly downhill, this feels like the best movie ever made.

Like father like son:

Pre-credits scene has Vincent Zhao making some very un-Jet-Li awesome moves, then his name is splashed across the screen – good, they’re not trying to hide the new guy. It’s also the first sequel to start directly after the previous one – they’re still celebrating the end of the Lion King festival when friendly Governor Zhiwen Wang (currently of the Infernal Affairs TV series) shows up and they lion-dance together.

Foon, Clubfoot, and Yan are back in the mix, but 13th Aunt is replaced by (Katy guessed it) 14th Aunt: Jean Wang of Swordsman III and Iron Monkey the same year. New director Yuen doesn’t exactly revitalize the series here. The dubbing is bad, and despite having a subplot about a group using wires to appear to fly, the movie itself is full of unintentionally visible wires, especially in the heinous horse-punching scenes (yes, there’s more than one).

14th Aunt starts a newspaper but nobody in town knows how to read – so, technologically we’ve moved from still photography to motion pictures to the printing press. Anti-foreigner sword cult Red Lantern is menacing everyone, and the foreigners have equipped their lion suits with deadly weapons. The nice governor dies, it’s very sad, then Wong takes a measured bit of revenge before withdrawing to prep for the final(?) movie.

Chin Ka-Lok is angry, I’ve forgotten why:

Ze Germans:

Set in Beijing leading up to a grand lion king dance event. For a friendly sporting competition, a lot of guys sure get set on fire or catch spears through the chest. Focus is less on individual kung-fu, more on lion-head spectacle, though enemy-turned-ally Clubfoot (Xiong Xinxin, villain of The Blade) is the breakout star of the former. The comedy and romance get pretty bad – in fact anything that isn’t a lion-head dance is wasted time, and Foon is the worst offender. The photography is sharper than ever though, especially when Rosamund is around, and there’s some good shadowplay. Rosamund’s Russian motion-picture supplier turns out to be an assassin, caught in the act by his own tech.

New stunt coordinator Yuen Bun did Dragon Inn and the Royal Tramp movies the same year, later went on to work with Johnnie To on greats like Throw Down and Sparrow. Interesting to hear Tsui in the blu extras complain about lack of originality in modern film – everyone studies the same references and produces the same movies.

Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan are back, taking vacation with Foon (now played by Max Mok, Sammo’s buddy in Pedicab Driver), apparently with no hard feelings after Foon teamed up with the disruptive Iron Vest in part one. Strange for this episode to be the follow-up, since the first one begins with Wong Fei-hung wishing to expel all foreigners, and here his enemy is a violent flaming-arrow-shooting cult which wishes to… expel all foreigners. Kidnapping Rosamund for owning a camera and burning down Jet’s medical conference are direct attacks, true.

The baddest-ass fighter isn’t even a cult member (though the cult’s bulletproof mystic is pretty good, played by Jet’s stunt double), it’s a cop who’s happy to play-fight Wong but won’t help out the children the cult is trying to murder. The cop is Donnie Yen in his breakout year, with Tsui casting him in this and the Dragon Inn remake. Both these guys die in the end, after some magical wire work, as does friendly David Chiang (the dandy of Boxer from Shantung), but beloved Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (Zhang Tielin of The Magic Crane) escapes safely to begin his revolution.

In the extras, Yen casually refers to himself as “the ultimate martial arts opponent for Jet Li” and explains the difference between being a great martial artist and a great martial arts actor.

Wong Fei-hung is trying to run his martial arts school while the master is away and fulfill their dream of expelling the foreigners, along with his men – strong Porky Wing, stuttering bilingual So, and guy without qualities Kai – but everyone keeps getting mad at him. Scarface and his Shaho gangsters terrorize the town, burn down the school, and kidnap Wong’s young 13th Aunt to sell to the Americans. After causing much trouble Scar ends up thrown in a furnace by his kidnappees. The British and Chinese governments want Wong arrested. Then mercenary superfighter Iron Vest Yim comes to town, gains a disciple in fired theater worker Foon, and keeps challenging Wong. He ends up shamed for his hidden knife technique, roundly defeated in ladder combat, then murdered by the whites. The Brits have their own kung fu champ, who takes a Wong-thrown bullet to the brain – victory.

Our series stars: Jet Li, who wasn’t anybody until this came out, and Rosamund Kwan, who’d been in the Jackie/Sammo/Lucky Stars group. I didn’t realize the disciples wouldn’t be regulars – Porky Wing (Kent Cheng Jak-Si of Sex & Zen and Crime Story) will return in part 5. Jacky Cheung, in the middle of his WKW era, had better prospects than playing Bucktooth So. Yuen Gam-Fai (Kai) continued playing guys without qualities, hitting the height of 7th-billed-in-Burning Paradise. Iron Vest Yen Shi-Kwan is the evil master of Heroic Trio. His boy Foon is Yuen Biao, also from the Lucky Stars gang. And Scarface would appear in a Charlie Chan action-mystery called Madam City Hunter.

Porky, Kai, So, Jet, Rosamund:

The signage… it’s trying to tell us something:

Tony Rayns: Hark returned to HK from NY, made his three angry young man films (ahem), those made no money and he reinvented himself as a family entertainer in early 1980s with Zu and some comedies. Chose Jet Li from the mainland for his action skills and old-fashioned dignity. OUATIC is the English title, original is just Wong Fei-hung, and OUATIC2 is called Wong Fei-hung 2: A Man Must Rely on His Own Strength.

Ladderdance:

Hairknife:

Time for another Sammo Hung movie. This time he’s a butcher, introduced slipping on a banana peel, but the butcher job barely matters – mainly he’s a disciple of Wong Fei-Hung (Kwan Tak-Hing, who’d been playing Wong since the 1940s), innocently helping start a war with another school run by Lee Hoi-Sang (a fighter in Game of Death II). One of the rival school’s guys is evil Ko (Fung Hak-On of Police Story) who has kidnapped Sammo’s little brother’s wife. Meanwhile, a weird beggar gets some chickens drunk, turns out to be drunken master Fan Mei-Sheng (of The One-Armed Swordsman) with an interest in solving the kidnapping. Allies and rivalries get all mixed up, and there’s more crazy plot stuff and some brutal deaths, but we have come to watch great fighting performed with unusual weapons (I just saw the Ko fan fighter as the master in Encounters of the Spooky Kind II) against ludicrous villains (Mad Dog from Yes, Madam! appears here without the mustache as “Weird Cat”).

The brother and the drunken master:

Guess who: