“Last Hero in China” Theatrical Poster
Director: Wong Jing
Cast: Jet Li, Nat Chan Pak Cheung, Alan Chui Chung San, Leung Kar Yan, Dicky Cheung, Chu Tiet Wo, Sharla Cheung Man, Gordon Liu, Anita Yuen, Chun Kwai Bo
Running Time: 105 min.
By Numskull
First of all, I want to say that the World Video DVD for this movie has an unforgivable manufacturing defect. Although Cantonese and Mandarin both appear as language options, you can only watch the movie in Cantonese. Why? Because, if you select Mandarin, the DVD restarts and the options go back to the default settings. Try it again, try it a third time, try it until your DVD player’s remote control’s batteries are completely drained…you’ll always get the same result. So, who is responsible for this monumental fuck-up? Have they been fired? And, if so, then why the hell not? A trained chimp could have done a better job testing this thing, for fuck’s sake.
Anyway… the movie itself combines Yuen Wo-Ping’s fight choreography with Wong Jing’s direction, so it’s obviously a mixed bag. Jet Li plays Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, and… you know what, I’m getting pretty fucking sick of Wong Fei-Hung all the damn time. I’m sure he was a great man and everything, but he’s been portrayed in more friggin’ movies than Count Dracula, Hercules, and Santa Claus combined. All you lazy Chinese film makers, next time you wanna make a period kung fu movie, just have the hero be some guy. Sane people don’t give a shit about Wong Fei-Hung anymore because he’s been in like a thousand fucking movies already. Give it a rest, dammit!
There, I said it.
The fact that this is the best Wong Jing film I’ve seen to date is a very sad commentary on his abilities, because it sure as shit ain’t a great movie. Jet Li’s talents were wasted on all of his collaborations with this hack. Fortunately, Yuen Wo-Ping injects some much-needed excitement into this lame story about a kung fu school moving in next to a brothel and young women being abducted by some screwy cult. There’s a stupid musical number where the whores sing without subtitles in voices that are much different from the ones they use when they’re just talking. There’s also a very familiar-sounding score, a villain who laughs at everything, a sub-plot about medicine that makes people deaf, and a scene where Jet Li dresses up as a rooster to fight a giant centipede (not a real one…you know, it’s being held up by a row of guys inside, just like those dragons). The dreaded No Shadow Kick makes an appearance and Wong Fei-Hung engages in some drunken fist kung fu in an apparent nod to Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master films. There are outtakes in the ending credits; a rarity for Jet Li.
I don’t wanna talk about this movie anymore. It’s so average, it kinda pisses me off. Go away.
Numskull’s Rating: 5/10
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