Dave from Ottawa This wonderful adventure comedy is filled with eye-popping action and big budget sets and other top line production values, but what really makes the movie is the fact that the main story is framed within another even funnier story. You see, Dr. Wai, China's answer to Indiana Jones, is a fictional creation of author Jet Li, who has writer's block and is facing a deadline. So, his two idiot assistants and soon-to-be-ex-wife 'help' him by writing in parts of the story while he sleeps, causing the main story line of 'Dr. Wai' to go off in wild directions, and causing characters to shift from good to bad and back again. As a straight adventure movie, this is fine entertainment, but as a comedy about the creative process it is very clever and quite effective. Each of the four writers has his/her own slant and makes the story different by their contributions, and yet it all comes together smoothly. Plus, the mix of comedy, romance, historical fiction and martial arts action meshes well, something that is not often the case in Hong Kong pictures.HIGHLY recommended for anybody who likes Jet Li, action movies in general, or even movies about writers. This one is smart, well-formed entertainment.

winner55 Thomas Weissman, who wrote a supposedly major text on Asian cinema (which unfortunately probably blocked publication of better texts for some time) pee-ed off a lot of fans of Hong Kong cinema. One of the reasons is that he knows dam' well the difference between a good movie and a good "genre" film, but, instead of developing this difference critically, he prefers to smudge it, and thus frequently leaves readers with misconceptions.Weissman's review of this film promised a real avant-garde transgression of time and space, of pulp and serious narrative. I'm afraid that's not what's happening here.For one thing, we get no closer to any of this characters than we do in any other Hong Kong genre film. That's important; to make real transgressions of time, space, genre, etc., we need to see what's going on from a particular point of view. (If one doesn't care for "The Singing Detective" - and I don't - then refer to "Slaughterhouse Five".) Since this is really an "action-comedy". it can't do that. Instead, it scrambles its plot around from several different points of view; but the heart of the narrative remains action, not 'perspective'.Well, is it a good action comedy? yeah, I enjoyed it, I'll probably watch it again. IS it the super-duper-transgressive New-wave make or break film that Weissman and a few others have touted it as? Nope. For that see Wong Kar Wai's "Ashes of Time".But not every film has to be really really serious or 'great'. This is a fun film, with some weird displacements of time and space, just to make it interesting. Enjoy it as such.

Libretio DR. WAI IN "THE SCRIPTURE WITH NO WORDS" (Mao Xian Wang)Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic)Sound format: Dolby DigitalA huge disappointment from director Tony Ching (DUEL TO THE DEATH, "A Chinese Ghost Story"), this lumbering would-be spectacular - conceived as a light-hearted riff on the Indiana Jones subgenre - finds paperback author Jet Li ploughing all of his frustrations from a crumbling marriage to Rosamund Kwan into a work of fiction where his brave alter ego (a 1930's soldier of fortune, also played by Li) seeks a magical scripture and is thwarted at every turn by a villainous seductress (also Kwan) and her evil cohorts.The half-hearted script (by Szeto Cheuk-hon, Sandy Shaw and Lam Wai-lun) lurches from one overblown set-piece to another in search of a worthwhile narrative, combining lackluster comedy and predictable action scenes in a failed attempt at a modern epic. However, the combat sequences - choreographed by Ching himself, aided and abetted by Ma Yuk-sing (CAT AND MOUSE) - are staged with typical cinematic bravado, but the formula is wearing a little thin, and the intrusive comic asides serve only to drain tension from the various confrontations between Good and Evil. Stunningly photographed in an uncredited scope format by veteran cinematographer Tom Lau (DRAGON INN, THE EAST IS RED), the film conjures a vivid period atmosphere, and there's a couple of outstanding set-pieces - including a spectacular train crash; Li's encounter with a couple of Sumo wrestlers (don't ask!); and the final showdown with villain Billy Chow - though the climactic visual effects are poor by western standards. Li and Kwan, reunited from their successful teaming in the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series, are attractive and lively, while Takeshi Kaneshiro (CHUNG KING EXPRESS) and Charlie Yeung (FALLEN ANGELS) are largely wasted in routine supporting roles.Plagued by budgetary problems following a disastrous fire which destroyed $HK10 million worth of sets, producers sought to bolster the film's international fortunes by hiring Tsui Hark to direct additional footage for a re-edited export version which drops the modern day sequences and rearranges the narrative in linear fashion. It doesn't help much, but the filmmakers at least deserve points for trying.(Cantonese dialogue)

lonnieturner Jet Li stars as a writer of a series based on the character King of Adventures. When an accident puts him in the hospital, friends try to continue his current storyline for him. Great fun ensues as new twists and turns spring from the different characters adding to the story; including a pair of flying sumo wrestlers (!) and some well done CGI. A change of pace for the usually intense Li that's one of the most enjoyable HK movies of '96.