Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu Hustle (2004) – on rental. I haven’t followed kung fu films for at least 15 years now. Heck… one of those things I never figured out was why Westerner movie-goers were so enamored with Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I watched it in the cinema with my younger brother nearly 10 years ago, and I remembered the local filmgoers here laughing at all those ‘balletic’ gong fu sequences in the theatre. Poetry in motion? Martial artists tip-toeing on bamboos? Yuck.

Funnily, Matt had been raving about Kung Fu Hustle for at a while now, and he expressed abject horror whenever I told him I haven’t seen that film yet. So, after exhausting most of this year’s films that’s out on rental already, I started adding some older titles to the rental queue, and Kung Fu Hustle was one of them – and only on Matt’s repeated prompting that Hustle was a must watch.

95 minutes later, I can see why Hustle has got such a high rating on IMDB. It’s unbelievably baloney, crazily outrageous, full of camp – but riotously funny while at it! This film has no pretentions about producing high drama or sophistication in its story-telling – sorry Ang Lee apologists – but it’s from start to end a homage of all the 1970s gong fu dramas. And this film doesn’t even require you to be a fan of Bruce Lee-esque or 80s Hong Kong martial arts flicks to enjoy even, though from the cast list, a number of veterans from films of that era are in the picture – no doubt demonstrative of director / producer / writer / lead actor Stephen Chow’s great love for the genre.

The film tells the story of a 1930s Shanghai run by rival warlords and their gangs with the police cowering in fear. The dominant group, the Axe Gang, is particularly ruthless but has left the seedier and poorer districts alone, I’m guessing because there’s no money there to rob there LOL.

Unfortunately, one particular district draws the attention of this gang when small-time crook and lock pick artist Sing (played by Stephen Chow) shows up with his buddy pretending to be members of the Axe Gang. The district however is anything but unprotected, and as the story unfolds, we see not one or two but several Super Martial Arts Masters revealing themselves to mix it all up.

From the production notes, a number of martial arts choreographers were involved in the production, and their diverse styles show. The first fight scene is dramatically different from the second which is very different from the third etc. The most recognizable contribution for modern audiences though I’m guessing will be from Yuen Woo-ping. One scene he directs has a striking resemblance to The Matrix Reloaded, and were it not for the fact that it’s the same martial arts master directing the moves, you’d forgive Warner Bros. if they decided to sue Hustle for plagiarism.

Then there’s also the crazily hilarious homage to cartoonish violence and chase scenes, especially – and would you believe it – from The Road Runner cartoons. Yep – two characters in the film are running at top speed with their legs in a blurry spin, and the chase scene only ends when one of them ends up flying smack into a large billboard. Exactly the sort of thing you see Wile E. Coyote doing.

For want of a better descriptor, I’ll say Kung Fu Hustle is really a big animated cartoon rendered using real human actors, with CG liberally applied to create all those outrageous stuff that’d literally kill the actors if they tried doing it for real. It’s all very visual, very stylish, very goofy, quite mad-cap, all very extreme – but all in good fun. Won’t work for everyone though, but it did for me.:)