CORPORATE LINE: Stephen Chow’s follow-up to SHAOLIN SOCCER ups the over-the-top action quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow–who wrote, produced, and directed–doesn’t step in as the star here for quite a while, letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabers from lyre strings, and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named “the Beast” (Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers. Buoyed by SOCCER’s box office success, HUSTLE uses bigger production values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts (imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in THE MATRIX). It’s full of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti westerns and ’70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino’s KILL BILL (fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping worked on both films). It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W. Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong’s inspired score matches each cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera circles and swoops around the sprawling sets. This is a real treat, more than a great action film or comedy; it’s a great film period, and one that set box office records in the East.
THE GOOD: Everything about Kung Fu Hustle screams cartoon and yet its real people doing really cool things (aided of course by computers); from fighting to landlady chasing Sing like the Roadrunner after Wyle E. Coyote.
There is no real serious fighting—imagine the Matrix on acid. Everything is fantasy with some touches of realism and yet it’s more enjoyable than most extended fight scenes that have hit the screen in the last few years.
There is even a scene where the Axe Gang dances. It’s an ode to old Hollywood gangster movies and Gangs of New York. The ultra-cool masters that live in a village of poor people so they can live a regular existence are revealed when the Axe Gang makes their way into the Pig Sty (that is the name of the place they live). The masters are cool—but not as cool as those to come.
THE BAD: Not a second of mediocrity.
FRANKLY: Kung Fu Hustle is flimsy around the edges but what makes Kung Fu Hustle unique is the comic book style that is chockfull of zaniness. It’s more than a comic book… it almost resembles those old Warner cartoons with Bugs Bunny and gang.
Kung Fu Hustle is so jam-packed with great actors and wonderful characters that you could watch them over and over again. Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu are brilliant as the Landlord and Landlady. Stephan Chow who pulls double duty as Director and star shines even as he is overshadowed by the talent that surrounds him.
Kung Fu Hustle is without a doubt the must see movie of the year.
+ Charlie Craine
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