BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

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.

david-sarkies Woah, what a brilliant movie. This movie was the movie that made me want to get cable TV because world movies was advertising it, and it caught my attention immediately. I didn't end up getting cable because not only did I find this movie at my not-so-local video store, but I discovered that it had yellow subtitles - which are far better than the white ones that are found on most Chinatown videos.Now, I at first thought that this movie was a simply Indiana Jones adventure movie, which was one of the reasons that I wanted to hire it. There was a lot of similarities between this movie and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the thing is that this movie was a thousand times better - Harrison Ford was never that great a martial artist.The difference with this movie is that it jumps between the 1930's and the present day. Dr Wai is actually a script being written by a company and the writer is in the middle of divorce and has lost all will to right, so his assistants take the job of writing it for him, but when he sees it going a way he doesn't like, he takes over and moves it to a more acceptable place, then others come along and add their own bits to the story.The writer of the story is a geek (though Jet Li doesn't come across as a geek) and so are his co-writers. Every character in the present era have duplicates in the story, though this duplicity becomes less substantial as the characters being to take on their real names and real roles. Dr Wai is about dreams and how we place ourselves into our own dreams, a dream of what we want to be is true. Here the geek, who could not hurt anybody, is a rough, tough, adventurer king who is a whizz at martial arts. His wife, Monica, is a bitch queen who controls the Japanese soldiers in China. Yet when others take over, their perception of Monica take over, and so does their perception of Dr Wai. The scene where he drives a steam train through the town is a classic scene of where another aspect of Dr Wai emerges.The movie itself seems predictable, but we don't watch Hong Kong movies for their unpredictability (actually we do, because there are a lot of unpredictable aspects to their movies) but we watch them for their action, and Dr Wai delivers. It has every thing from ramming a steam train through numerous buildings, jumping out of a burning aeroplane, fighting a monster who is in fact the bad guy who was mutated, and ancient artifacts that are needed to be retrieved. This movie has it and this movie seriously rocks.

laadolf Dr. Wai and the Scripture With No Words is a rousing adventure tale set in the middle part of the 20th century. Dr. Wai, known as the King of Adventurers, is a writer and archaeologist in the mold of Indiana Jones, and a renowned finder of missing artifacts.He is also the alter-ego of his creator, Chow Si-Kit, played by Jet Li. Chow Si-Kit is a beleaguered writer of serialized adventure tales whose own life is in a tailspin. His wife, Monica (Rosamund Kwan) wants a separation and is going to great lengths to insure the break with her husband up to and including engaging in the equivalent of phone sex with her husband's employer in Si-Kit's presence. Later, at a dinner requested by Monica to discuss divorce, a famous movie star--another apparent romantic swain of Monica's-- barges in, lawyer in tow, offering the barrister's services for the divorce.His rotten home-life is intruding upon Si-kit's work. He is suffering from writers block and cannot seem to move the adventures of Dr. Wai forward--risking his livelihood.Fortunately, Chow Si-Kit has friends in the publishing house where he works. Shing (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is an eager young writer who befriends Si-Kit and tries his best to support him in his marital troubles and help break his writer's block. When that effort is unsuccessful, he enlists the aid of Yvonne, a pretty young colleague, and together they begin to ghost write the adventure of Dr. Wai and the Scripture With No Words. Shing is represented in the tale by an alter-ego--also named Shing who is sidekick and disciple to Dr. Wai The Scripture is actually a two fold artifact which has, in the course of time been sundered into its components. The first is a seemingly ordinary wooden box, with an inscribed lid--which can kill and maim the unsuspecting who open it. The second is a scripture scroll which, when joined with the box creates an oracle which can tell the future. Many nefarious and greedy types are looking for the two artifacts for their own ends. Dr Wai has more than one occasion to engage the villains in martial arts battle, providing a showcase for Jet Li's impressive physical prowess.Shing and Yvonne, who are engaged in a budding romance of their own, soon steer the serial into the area of romance, even while Chow Si-Kit is being ever more plagued by his personal life.The plot of the film within the film lurches forward in a somewhat non-linear way as a "novel by committee" is wrested to and fro between its authors. Ultimately the lines between reality and fiction become less distinct, as a convalescing Monica begins to see her husband in a new light. Coming into his room and finding him asleep and his friends gone, she makes contributions to the novel herself.The dual plots wind down, one to a bittersweet end, the other more hopeful.Jet Li is very appealing in the dual roles of Chow Si-Kit and Dr. Wai "King of Adventurers". Where Chow Si-Kit is a bit of a bumbler and a man victimized by life, Dr. Wai is capable and fearless in his pursuit of his objective. Takeshi Kaneshiro shines as the two Shings, both stalwart and steadfast in their support of their friends.Rosamund Kwan is the perfect ice princess as Monica, and her alter ego, Cammy. Charlie Yeung is excellent as Yvonne and the editor's assistant who is instrumental in bringing the two aspects of the Scripture With No Words together.=

YTSL This movie has an interesting premise (the depiction of and flip-flopping between a writer's fictional life as The King of Adventurers and his "real", problem-ridden -- he is in the middle of a huge writer's block precipitated by marital problems -- life). Although there may appear to be echoes of and borrowings from such American movies as "Romancing the Stone" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", it turns out to have characteristically Hong Kong elements ("wire fu" fights, cross-dressing, etc. -- all featuring the hero, as played by Jet Li; action -- in one case, whip-wielding -- women) as well as its own attractions (I particularly like the idea of the pen as a real as well as metaphorical weapon). All this having been said, it still seems to lack the extremes of and thus seem surprisingly tame compared to many another Hong Kong movie...which may explain why it is not a particular favorite of many Hong Kong movie fans. On the other hand, for those (relatively) unused to the pace, gore and quick mood changes of so many movies from that part of the world, this would be recommended as a movie which showcases the imagination of Hong Kong movie makers and the ability -- in terms of quality but also range of possibility -- of its actors and actresses.