Probably the most amazing thing to me, after viewing other recent films from Asia, is that this historical epic about the end of the Chinese royal empire, is only a little over an hour and a half. The story here seems so big that I was sure I was in store for another 3 hour plus ass-numb-a-thon, but the gods have smiled on me this time. There's some cool war action scenes and I guess if you're a big history buff this might be more interesting. Not being an expert on the history of China's Imperial rule I wasn't even sure what was so bad about it from this movie except that they had ruled for a really long time. I guess I could just go read a history book but it seems like an important factor that sets things into motion here might have been mentioned. Jackie Chan, as a revolutionary fighter, is the complete opposite of what you might expect from his more common comedic roles and I dig the older more serious Jackie, He does get in one kung fu scene where he shows off some of his more familiar athletic tricks and he is credited as co-director though I'm not sure how much of that he actually did. Overall this might be a good one-time watch for history buffs but action movie fans might be a little overwhelmed and/or put-off by the politics and motivations.
Technically Jackie has been in more than 100 movies but I guess if you don't count a few it makes for a cool tagline!:
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