The Legend II (1993)
The hero Fong Sai Yuk becomes involved in the secret brotherhood "The Red Flower", who are trying to overthrow the Manchurian emperor and re-establishing the Ming dynasty. The social upheaval is combined with Sai Yuk's personal moral conflict about how to conform to the rigid regime of the brotherhood and on top of that sort out his difficult love life, saddled with two presumptive wives.
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People are voting emotionally.
Admirable film.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Out of the recent Jet Li films I have saw like Cradle 2 the Grave and Black Mask *Jet Li - The Legend II* is one of the best ones I have come across. If you enjoyed the action in Last Hero in China or Twin Warriors I think you will have a great time with this film. This film is more darker than the original, which works for the best I think. Most of the humour is very well done and I really enjoyed it. The story is above average as well which is a bonus with Kung-Fu films.The action scenes are done very well and look great. One scene in particular at the end when Fong Sai Yuk is walking down a street to rescue his mother and is confronted by several men looks great and the slow motion build-up to the beginning is excellent.
Jet Li is far from his prime, like when he was in Shao Lin Temple (1979), in which all fighting scenes were real, the actual technique used in real combats. In this film, most fights are fake, purely designed for the cinematographic effect. You would be deeply disappointed if this film inspires you to learn martial arts, because there is rarely such moves in the real hand-to-hand combat application in martial arts, as the movie portrays.
It would be interesting to see this in Mandarain with English subtitles. The dubbed dialog is a bit odd, but not as bad as some I have seen. The action scenes are in the Croutching Tiger vein, which instead of relying on solely on the physical abilities of the actors features of a lot of special effects. Like Croutching Tiger, the women in this movie are quite capable of kicking butt. Also like Croutching Tiger, it is a historical piece that could be 100 years ago or 500 years ago. The guy who plays Dong, Fong Shi Yu's teacher, looks familiar, but the character is not listed on IMDB. Wonder what I've seen him in before.If you like Jet Li movies, this is one worth seeing.
Jet Li, more visible from Lethal Weapon, 4 returns as the hero of the Fong Sai Yuk movies. This one is darker and more serious than the first yet is just as enjoyable.