The Good: If you’ve read any of our reviews you know we like Jet Li so it comes as no surprise than that I really liked this movie. There are a few important "whys" though.

First, the movie has a challenge ahead of it. It’s a movie set in the 1920’s about rival martial arts styles. I think we’ve all seen enough Kung Fu theater to remember everything there is to know about dishonoring someone’s father, mother, sister or master so let’s fight about it! Now, they don’t have to do anything original with that storyline because it’s a martial arts movie but we lucked out and some poor writer was stuck adapting a decent story to Jet Li kicking ass, and most importantly he pulls it off.

That brings me to my next point. We’ve seen a million action fight sequences and Jackie Chan is a master at them, so what can a young guy bring to the screen? Well, after a few pretty damn fine fight scenes he brings some pretty amazing ones. Then when that ran it’s course a friggin fantastic scene. Then he went a little more to the whole Jet Li KICKS ASS scene.

Age old problem number three, the bad guys. Let me guess:: one dimensional. It’s a good old-fashioned super evil bad guy thingy. Turns out that preconception was wrong. I thought the movie did a really nice job of handling that issue. These bad guys didn’t operate in an omnipotent vacuum, there were other influences at work. that they had to deal with. At the end, though, is the meanest bad ass bad guy I’ve ever seen outside of comic books or Sci-Fi.

The Bad: Well, it is a Kung Fu movie. The story works and is different for this genre but you’re not going to get lost in political intrigue. That means it’s simple.

The Bottom Line: If they’re like this, I’ll start watching Kung Fu movies again!

My Rating: 5 cocktails for the best traditional martial arts film I’ve ever seen.