Once Upon a Time in China III
Once Upon a Time in China III
R | 11 February 1993 (USA)
Once Upon a Time in China III Trailers

Master Wong and his disciples enroll in the 'Dancing Lion Competition' to stop an assassination plot and to battle an arrogant, deceitful opponent.

Reviews
Karry

Best movie of this year hands down!

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Ceticultsot

Beautiful, moving film.

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Robert Joyner

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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Sameer Callahan

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

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Paul Magne Haakonsen

While the third movie in the "Once Upon a Time in China" series were better than part one, but wasn't up to part two story-wise, then this third installment did manage to hold its own. While it was very weak in storyline, it more than made up for the shortcoming in action and Chinese lion sequences.It seemed like the storyline was rushed through and that most of the movie had a script that was just made up as director Tsui Hark went along with shooting the film. But luckily the impressive action and martial arts were more than making up for it. It should also be said that there is a lot of scenes and fighting sequences with Chinese lions. So take that into consideration if you might have a problem with that.Jet Li delivers quite well once again, despite not having much of a solid and proper script to work with. So "Once Upon a Time in China 3" (aka "Wong Fei Hung III: Si wong jaang ba") seems mostly like a showcase for Jet Li's martial arts skills.This is not one of the brightest moments in Hong Kong cinema, nor in Tsui Hark's directing career."Once Upon a Time in China 3" is a movie mostly appealing only to fans of Jet Li.

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bob the moo

In order to demonstrate a show of strength to the foreigners, the Empress decrees a Lion King competition between the various martial arts schools. Wong Fei-hung returns home at this time to visit his father's school to find that the Tai-Ping school have set out to destroy the other schools before the competition itself. Fei-hung tries to bring peace between the schools but fails to stop the contest. Meanwhile Cousin suspects something more sinister going on around the contest.I feel like I'm under pressure here to say this isn't as good as the previous two films, simply because that seems to be the consensus of opinion on among reviewers here and also conventional wisdom says that a series will lose quality as it goes along. I settled to watch this expecting to be a drop from parts I & II (both of which I enjoyed), however I must say I found it to be every bit as enjoyable as part II (which I considered a more enjoyable film than part I). I do, however, recognise that it has weaknesses over the other two films.First off, the plot is significantly weaker and even needs a last minute conspiratorial shot in the arm to help up the drama and give the characters something extra to do. That said I still felt the film moved along well and wasn't too bothered by the lack of a real strong structure. The fights are free flowing and enjoyable (even if they have weak reasons for occurring sometimes). There is no one fight that really competes with the climax of part I but that doesn't mean they're bad. Certainly fans of Matrix and Crouching Tiger (who think this stuff is all a new invention!) will be impressed as indeed was I. The Lion King contest has been criticised for hiding the skills of the actors but I think it made for a different show of skill that did involve their martial arts skills and showed them in a big way. There are some scenes that are too clearly wire-work (although it is all wire work) but the majority of it flows very well.The main reason this film worked well for me was the way that it kept the humour from part II. The gentle comic touches all through are laugh-out-loud funny and really binds the whole film together. I've always felt that part II's humour made it better than part I, and part III continues that well. The romance between Fei-hung and cousin is also played well for both laughs and romance.The main reason the comedy works so well is the cast who all show a real skill for it. Mok's Yoon is the main reason for this and his little touches are great fun to watch. Jet Li also shows a real ability in comic acting that Hollywood has spectacularly failed to utilise (thus far). His interaction with the excellent Kwan brings a real spark to the film in the quieter scenes. His real skill of course is the martial arts and he is a real presence in every action scene. The addition of Iron Foot (Xiong) works well and he is a good character who is developed past the bad guy character he is first presented as.Overall I can understand why many would feel that this is a lesser film but I must say that I find it hard to put a wedge between any of the first three in the series (I have only seen these thus far). However, I enjoyed the action and felt that the comic touches worked very well and made this a very enjoyable film that was very easy to watch. The plot may be weaker than the previous films but it has other strengths that are used well. I can't comment on the rest of the series but this film made parts I-III a very strong and enjoyable series of films.

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abentenjo

Though nowhere near as good as its predecessors, episode three of the legendary series does have some memorable moments, though they may appear few and far between. On this occasion, Empress Dowager tries to cause hostility between foreign powers settling in China by holding the ultimate Lion Dance competition set to restore Chinese pride and heritage, only to have it quashed by martial madman Chiu Tin Bai who's intent is to annihilate the competition and win the Lion Dance himself. Wong Fei-hung steps in after his father is beaten down by Chiu's crazy henchman Clubfoot, and the stage is set for Wong's single-handed onslaught of all evildoers and the restoration of some kind of sanity in this crazy town. There's plenty of colourful lion dances to please the eye and Jet is still the most exciting thing around, yet what it really lacks in is purpose, setting no real moral high ground and merely acting as a relentless cash-in on its previous successes.

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Anonymoo-2

Jet Li's "acting" series whips around for a third time in this somewhat disappointing movie. I say "disappointing" because all his previous movies were more about the fighting and less about character development and goofy love triangles. Not that character development is a bad thing, I just feel that it doesn't have much place in a kung-fu film, and ESPECIALLY a Tsui Hark film. While break-dancer Club Foot does some incredible kicks, his character really drops low in the last half hour of the movie, and you wonder why the directors make him do what he does. Jet Li does some incredible fighting as the famous Wong Fei-Hung, but I was truly hoping that Tianbao from "Tai Ji Zhang San Feng" would come in and start a GOOD fight amidst all this lion-dancing crap. C'mon, I wanna see poles, swords, three-part staffs, and nunchaku, not these cumbersome lion masks!

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