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Against all odds, Shaolin Soccer--the story of an outcast soccer team competing in a national tournament--scored big around the world, winning a cult following not only in its homeland of Hong Kong, but also in countries like Italy, Japan and the United States.
Against all odds, Shaolin Soccer--the story of an outcast soccer team competing in a national tournament--scored big around the world, winning a cult following not only in its homeland of Hong Kong, but also in countries like Italy, Japan and the United States.
That success propelled Shaolin's director-cum-screenwriter-cum-star, Stephen Chow, into the movie world's premier league, and with his latest production the Bruce Lee fanatic is back working in the genre he knows best--kung fu.
In the Columbia Pictures-backed Kung Fu Hustle, Chow has fun spoofing U.S. movies like The Matrix and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. But, as with Shaolin Soccer, the movie's main source of entertainment is Chow & co.'s signature wire-action sequences, spiced up with deadpan jokes that unfailingly hit home.
The story opens with a group of gangsters kicking to death a police officer who made the mistake of handcuffing the wife of one of the thugs for spitting on the street. The blood-soaked officer begs for his life, but no one steps in to rescue him. Even the police chief turns a blind eye, not wanting to risk his own life to help someone else.
The sequence sets the tone of the story. This is Canton in the 1940s--a time and place where the bad guys had it good, and the baddest of the lot were the thugs known to the city as the Axe Gang--cold-blooded mobsters clad in black suits reminiscent of Agent Smith from The Matrix.
Chow's character is Sing, who, instead of aspiring to root out crimes as you might expect, longs to be an Axe Gang member. For him, they are local celebrities.
Visiting a poverty-stricken neighborhood called Pig Sty Alley to extort money from the residents, Sing (unsuccessfully) tries to intimidate residents who are too poor to care about anything, even their own life. But he does succeed in bringing the area to the attention of the Axe Gang.
The gangsters go on a rampage and threaten to burn some of the residents to death. But hope presents itself to the people of the Sty in the shape of three kung-fu masters--Doughnut (Dong Zhi Hua), Tailor (Dong Chi Ling) and Coolie (Xing Yu)--hitherto anonymous residents of the neighborhood. They outfight the ruthless mobsters, but set in motion a chain of brutal battles between the ex-kung-fu legends (in fact there are, as we soon learn, more than three kung-fu masters residing in the alley) and the gang headed by Brother Sum (Chan Kwok Kwan, who played a Bruce Lee look-alike goalkeeper in Shaolin Soccer.)
Kung Fu Hustle is a straightforward action flick built around cliched heroics, and some of the plot developments are a little bit abrupt and in need of explanation. But there is no denying the entertainment value of the movie, with Chow serving up comical stunts and warped gags in the vein of Austin Powers. He and his sidekick (Lam Chi Chung) deliver more than a few laughs along the way.
The movie also features a coolly choreographed dance sequence in which the members of the Axe Gang tap the floor with their eponymous axes.
Featuring many of the best action stars Hong Kong has ever produced, the fight scenes are powerful and pulsating, too. (The kicks and punches look like they really hurt.)
If Chow was ever concerned that he would be unable to emerge from the shadow of Shaolin Soccer's success (there is one scene in Kung Fu Hustle in which he crushes a soccer ball underfoot, saying "No more soccer!"), this film proves that he's a real entertainer.
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