Originally published 4/29/2005
Kung Fu Hustle
Director: Stephen Chow
Writers: Stephen Chow, Tsang Kan Cheong, Chan Man Keung, Lola Huo
Producers: Stephen Chow, Chui Po Chu, Jeff Lau
Stars: Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Leung Siu Lung, Huang Sheng Yi, Chan Kwok Kwan, Lam Tze Chung, Dong Zhi Hua, Chiu Chi Ling, Xing Yu, Feng Xiao Gang
First off, I don’t want to hear any more of this guff about how violence isn’t funny. Violence is hilarious – anyone who says otherwise never saw a Road Runner cartoon.
Filmmaker/Hong Kong comedy superstar Stephen Chow has seen a lot of Road Runner cartoons, as well as a lot of movies – especially kung fu movies. He has clearly seen enough of them to understand what can be fundamentally silly about them. When you have two people observing a fight and the dialogue goes: “What’s that! The Toad style from the Kang Tun School?”, followed by, “Oh no!”, if you can’t see what is funny about that there’s no hope for you.
Previous Chow films like God of Cookery and Shaolin Soccer have proved so crazily unusual and popular that they have given rise to a new genre in Hong Kong filmmaking, one whose name is literally translated as “nonsense”. Kung Fu Hustle is a delirious collision of nonsense, cartoon humor and martial arts, a work so refreshing and giddy it totally lacks for comparison or adequate description.
What story there is revolves around a turf war between the fearsome Axe Gang (natty dressers named for their weapon of choice) and the residents of Pig Sty Alley, so poor and destitute as to previously be beneath the gang’s notice. But a street hustler named Sing (Chow), posing with his best friend (Lam Tze Chung) as Axes in order to scam free drinks and haircuts, inadvertently trigger a brawl.
The residents of Pig Sty Alley, particularly three working-class heroes named Coolie (Xing Yu), Tailor (Chiu Chi Ling) and Donut (Dong Zhi Hua), prove surprisingly adept at beating back the previously insurmountable Axes, and so we are off on an escalating series of showdowns where one side roundly defeats the others’ champions, so they dig up new and better champions, seize the advantage, and so on. Eventually Sing, an expert in picking locks, is sent by the Axes to a psychiatric ward to break out a legendary warrior called The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), who, it is said, studied kung fu so intensely he went insane. “The slippers are kind of creepy”, Sing notes on producing the weird and surprisingly genial Beast, “but he’ll clean up real good.”
The Axes are led by Brother Sum (Chan Kwok Kwan), who dances suavely with himself – the other Axes dance in unison with him, probably because he has a short temper and likes killing. His frustration with Pig Sty Alley is commendably forthright – “We’re the bad guys! We should be doing the asskicking! Not the other way around!”
The Alley is ruled over by the fearsome Landlady (Yuen Qiu) and Landlord (Yuen Wah) – the Landlady is a tyrant in a nightgown with a perpetual cigarette burning, the Landlord strolls drunkenly around the alley in Hefner-inspired silk pajamas, peeping on girls. Then Landlady beats him. Eventually they’ll trade in their sleep gear and show what they are really capable of in some of the loudest, most flexible polyester leisure wear the world of cinema has ever seen.
Yuen Qiu and Yuen Wah were both members of “The Seven Little Fortunes”, the famed Peking Opera troupe that also included young Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung (the latter here assisting Matrix and Crouching Tiger legend Yuen Wo Ping with choreography), and Yuen Wah started his film career as Bruce Lee’s stunt double, which surely deserves some merit badge. They are among many aging legends of classic Hong Kong cinema who get to shine once again here, some poking fun at their past roles, others just having a swell time.
It’s driven by the impeccable and anarchic sensibilities of Chow, who uses goofy large-scale digital effects with just as much comfort as he does old-fashioned shtick. Watch the precise build he gives to a hilarious sequence involving three knives and a basket of snakes – it’s like something you would see in a Laurel and Hardy short, if Laurel and Hardy had ever tried to become assassins.
Compared to the action comedy of Chan, who works more with the perpetual-motion-geometry of a Buster Keaton and the dynamic physical invention of a Gene Kelly, Chow’s work is less innately jaw-dropping but a lot more dependent on pacing and contrast. Again we come back to the Road Runner example – what’s funny is how you can get laughs just as big from the most bombastic violence as you can from the doomed, still silence right beforehand, as the coyote’s pupils narrow to tiny dots and he can see the end coming. The two extremes are dependent on each other, and Chow makes that philosophy work from the fighting to the crazy-quilt musical score by Raymond Wong.
Those who sniff that “wire-fu” is bad because it is “unrealistic” will likely not be amused by bodies tumbling through the air like soda cans or a musical instrument that can kill (as well as do something most unfortunate to a stray cat). And it must be said that comedy is the hardest genre to translate, so not every gag plays here like it might for the home crowd – though credit is due to the subtitle writers for the breezy, self-mocking way they capture the interplay. But Kung Fu Hustle is both a celebration of and a prankish assault on a genre that left realism behind long ago, it is no more part of the equation than it is when Elmer Fudd walks off a cliff but doesn’t fall until he looks down.