Director: Marco Mak
Notable Cast: Vincent Zhao, Lubing Li, Miya Muqi, Kenya
Sawada
Less than a year ago, Well Go USA brought the latest Wong
Fei Hung movie to the US. Starring Vincent Zhao and titled The Unity of Heroes,
the film was meant to be a throwback to the early 90s Wong Hei Fung films of
the Once Upon a Time in China series that launched the carries of both
Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Vincent Zhao. Although the audience reaction was relatively
mixed, my own enjoyment of the film was decently high. You can read my review of
the film over HERE if you have a few moments. Needless to say, when the sequel
was being released in the US just under a year later, under the title Warriors
of the Nation, I was relatively excited. What else would this latest
incarnation of the folk hero bring to the table?
Oddly enough, Warriors of the Nation brings
relatively little to the table. Not that it’s missing the entertaining martial arts
piece in its own right, a topic that I will touch on in a second, but
considering how hard the first film meant to recapture the character in order to play
with nostalgia for older fans and perhaps add some newer fans, this film feels
thin. The plot brings in the White Lotus cult, which was a major plot point in Once
Upon a Time in China 2, and it sees Wong Fei Hung (Vincent Zhao) with a few
of his students and his boo get caught up in the political intrigue around the
cult and a potential Japanese invasion by sea.