Once Upon A Time In China And America [DVD] [1997]

During an early encounter with Indians, an accident causes Wong Fei-Hung to lose his memory and become separated from his group. On recovery he notices that despite his amnesia he can still perform martial arts with his usual devastating effect. Now he must somehow communicate with a tribe when he only knows Cantonese, and try and get them to help him regain his memory and rejoin his friends.

This is actually not particularly great, despite the direction being by the normally-brilliant Sammo Hung ('Eastern Condors', 'Wheels On Meals', 'Dragons Forever') and the producer being Tsui Hark, who had involvement with the other entries in the series.

The Wild West setting is comparatively murky compared to the lush colourings in the Chinese-set predecessors (although I've not at the time of writing seen the entries between this and OUATIC3, which featured Chiu Man Cheuk ['The Black Sheep Affair', 'Body Weapon'] in the title role, so I don't know how they look), and many of the sections of the martial arts scenes have been undercranked to stupidly high levels, which I thought was a bit of a shame, as Jet Li and Xin-Xin Xiong don't really need to have a speed boost. I expect that the looming 1997 handover, coupled with the comparative lack of speed of the westerners, may have forced them to resort to this.

Sadly, not a classic. If you can, try before you buy.

Contains the usual option of watching it with English dubbing or Cantonese Language with English Subtitles (sadly they are the occasionally-poor-quality Hong Kong subs rather than the remastered ones, so expect some unintentional humour through dodgy translations).

To summarise the story, Wong Fei Hung loses his memory, gets it back(Legend). Then gets framed and imprisoned and fights some western robbers who for some reason know martial arts (Once upon a time in China). The film just ignores all sanity, and Wong Fei Hung leaves happily, having 'liberated' the town and making friends with the 'natives'. They seemingly ignore the fact that the natives are soon to be massacred and nearly wiped off the face of the earth. I just found myself asking 'Why couldn't it be set in China.
The only good thing about this film is the reunion of Wong, 13th Aunt, Iron foot(now called seven for some unknown reason) and So(L). But other than that it is a complete waste of money.

Th DVD? It is presented in two formats
1) Poor quality Widescreen with bad subtitles and sound.
2) Slightly better quality with hateful dubbing.
And, no. You cannot combine the two.

The extras are the only thing that prevented one star, with some OK behind the scenes stuff and some detail about Wong Fei Hung.

If you still really really want this after all I've said, only buy (or rent) it really really cheap. Then watch it under supervision with no sharp objects close by.