...but still entertaining for the most part. This third move in the series is the weakest and least ambitious of the group, seeming satisfied to ignore the actual politics of China's tumultuous 19th century in favor of some made-up nonsense about Russian spies.

There is a martial arts tournament at the movie's center which Wong Fei Hung (Jet Li again) enters and must win for some reason, plus the always welcome Rosamund Kwan is back as Aunt Yee and the movie contrives to put her into danger again and again to keep things lively. The resulting mish- mash of a plot is rather hard to keep straight and honestly there is little profit in doing so. The producers themselves seemed to have a poor awareness of where everything was ultimately leading.

Enjoy the good period look and the quite impressive martial arts on display in the tournament and try not to take anything too seriously.

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.

This sequel is set in Beijing; the Dowager Empress has decided to stage a lion dance festival to show off Chinese martial arts and encourage more people to take up kung fu. As preparations are getting underway Wong Fei-hung, along with 'Aunt' Yee and Foon, arrive in Beijing to visit Wong's father. He is the head of one of the martial arts schools hoping to compete in the festival... however the leader of one school is trying to bully all of the others into backing out of the competition. Inevitably Wong gets involved as he tries to encourage peaceful behaviour. In the background to this Wong is jealous after Aunt Yee meets up with a Russian friend she first met while studying in Britain. As the festival approaches tensions rise further and there are more intense fights.

This film is a fun addition to the 'Once Upon a Time in China' series of films; it has a decent, if simply, story, plenty of laughs and a lot of brilliantly choreographed martial arts. The three main characters are back, although for some reason 'Aunt' Yee becomes 'Cousin' in the subtitles of the version I saw. There are also good new characters, notable Clubfoot (renamed Iron Foot), the villain Chiu Tin-bak and the Russian Tomanovsky. As said before there is lots of impressive martial arts action; some of this includes obvious wire-work but that didn't bother me; much of it also takes place while the characters are in their lion costumes which looks pretty cool. The romantic subplot provides a few decent laughs without distracting from the main plot. The acting is pretty solid throughout; most notably from Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan as Wong and Aunt Yee. Overall I really enjoyed this and suspect most fans of less brutal martial arts films will enjoy it too.

These comments are based on watching the film in Cantonese with English subtitles.