Thursday, April 28, 2005
Kung Fu Hustle
3 Stars
R, 99 minutes
South Wind 12
Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle is the best live-action cartoon since the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. It’s funny, ultra-violent and, yes, a little exhausting.
In his native Hong Kong, Chow has developed a reputation as the next Bruce Lee. His seven features as director and star — among them 2001’s Shaolin Soccer — show a slapstick comedian as much as a martial-arts master. He’s also a fluid and energetic filmmaker, virtues evident in nearly every scene of Kung Fu Hustle.
The setting is Shanghai in the 1940s, “a time of social disorder and unrest,” when the Axe Gang, dressed in bow ties and top hats, rules the city. The gang receives its comeuppance from a batch of retired warriors hiding out in a slum named Pig Sty Alley. There, we meet the Landlady, a middle-aged shrew who chain smokes and beats her husband. We also meet a hairdresser whose butt is always hanging out and a shopkeeper named Donut.
Then there’s Sing, played by Chow, who lives a life of petty crime but is destined to become a great warrior. We know this because when Sing was a kid an old man stopped him on the street and declared him a “one in a thousand kung-fu genius.” We should all be so lucky.
Chow piles on visual gags that defy the laws of nature, lending the film a kind of breezy comic anarchy. People get their faces and feet smashed in, but live to fight another day, while a chase on foot looks like it was taken right out of an old 'Road Runner” cartoon.
As silly as it is, Kung Fu Hustle showcases exhilarating fight scenes filled with wall-to-wall destruction and state-of-the-art special effects. This innovative mix of the absurd and the savage leaves the viewer worn out but doubly entertained.
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