Tsui Hark
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Bruce Lee has Enter the Dragon , Jackie Chan has the Drunken Master , Jet Li has Once Upon a Time in China (both different takes on the same character) and now Donnie Yen can add his name to the list of memorable films with Ip Man.
It's easy to watch it and get the feel of an old Shaw Brothers movie, or Jet Li's "Once Upon a Time in China" series.
But I, for one, have always preferred the more traditional genre films that just let the martial arts style speak for itself such as the Once Upon a Time in China films and the recent Fearless and Ip Man is one of the most rousing to come along in a while.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in China (1991)
Themes
Many Tarantino fans assumed that “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” was meant to evoke the same spirit as Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” or “Once Upon a Time in America,” Tsui Hark’s “Once Upon a Time in China” or even Robert Rodriguez’s “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” – which is to say a big epic with lots of violence and strong characters that in some manner defines the location on which the story is based.
Triangle Chris Smith’s first two films, Creep (2004) and Severance (2006), have both been featured at past FrightFests, so having as this year’s festival opener the world premiere of his third film just adds to the sense of homecoming.
The battle scenes in "Gladiator" don't have the exultant lift of Hong Kong period-action pictures like the "Once Upon a Time in China" series, where the fights have the eye-popping panache of dance sequences from a musical.
Headed by the supremely creepy Weaving as the relentless Agent Smith (think Terminator meets the X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man), Reeves and his crew put themselves through some of the most rigorous stuntwork this side of Jackie Chan (indeed, the martial arts sequences, of which there are many, were overseen by longtime HK fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping of Once Upon a Time in China, among others).
Two of the three share the same writers and the same martial arts coordinator, Yuen Woo-ping (also the fight coordinator for "Iron Monkey," "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon").