Brightly shot and densely edited, Pie in the Sky is itself a manic meth rap. Berlin's current preoccupation with key lime pie may be less interesting than the scurvy gossip she retailed in her Factory days, but the movie manages to have its cake and eat it too debunking the Berlin image even while reveling in it. Pie in the Sky inspires less surprise that Berlin lived to tell the tale of her dissolute youth than amazement that she lived at all. Speaking of second chances, it's no wonder that the American success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would revive interest in Tsui Hark, the great genre resuscitator of post-1980 Hong Kong cinema. Upon a Time in China , to be followed next week by its first and best sequel.
New titles make the movie much easier to follow, up to a point.
For all the complicated intrigue, Once Upon a Time in China is essentially spectacle its escalating action is bathed in a nostalgic golden light, when there's no nocturnal monsoon. Li, an athletic performer with more technique than personality, opens up by performing a one-man Dragon Dance on a ship's rigging. Master of the backward somersault and the corkscrew leap stunts accentuated by Tsui's whirling camera he holds off an entire army with an umbrella. As far as I can tell, the acrobatics are authentic. The movie's set piece a miraculous balancing act involving a fight to the death in a warehouse filled with ladders took two weeks to shoot.