{"id":6179,"date":"2009-10-11T18:37:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T10:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=6179"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:19:15","slug":"kung-fu-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/10\/11\/kung-fu-hustle\/","title":{"rendered":"Kung Fu Hustle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hustle-01\" Kung Fu Hustle<\/a><\/em> (2004) \u2013 on rental. I haven\u2019t 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\u2019s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. <\/em>I watched it in the cinema with my younger brother nearly 10 years ago, and I remembered the local filmgoers here laughing <\/em>at all those \u2018balletic\u2019 gong fu sequences in the theatre. Poetry in motion? Martial artists tip-toeing on bamboos? Yuck.<\/p>\n

Funnily, Matt had been raving about Kung Fu Hustle<\/em> for at a while now, and he expressed abject horror whenever I told him I haven\u2019t seen that film yet. So, after exhausting most of this year\u2019s films that\u2019s out on rental already, I started adding some older titles to the rental queue, and Kung Fu Hustle<\/em> was one of them \u2013 and only on Matt\u2019s repeated prompting that Hustle<\/em> was a must watch.<\/p>\n

95 minutes later, I can see why Hustle<\/em> has got such a high rating on IMDB. It\u2019s unbelievably baloney, crazily outrageous, full of camp \u2013 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 \u2013 but it\u2019s from start to end a homage of all the 1970s gong fu dramas. And this film doesn\u2019t 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 \u2013 no doubt demonstrative of director \/ producer \/ writer \/ lead actor Stephen Chow\u2019s great love for the genre.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m guessing because there\u2019s no money there to rob there LOL.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m guessing will be from Yuen Woo-ping. One scene he directs has a striking resemblance to The Matrix Reloaded<\/em>, and were it not for the fact that it\u2019s the same martial arts master directing the moves, you\u2019d forgive Warner Bros. if they decided to sue Hustle<\/em> for plagiarism.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s also the crazily hilarious homage to cartoonish violence and chase scenes, especially \u2013 and would you believe it \u2013 from The Road Runner<\/em> cartoons. Yep \u2013 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<\/a> doing.<\/p>\n

For want of a better descriptor, I\u2019ll say Kung Fu Hustle<\/em> is really a big animated cartoon rendered using real human actors, with CG liberally applied to create all those outrageous stuff that\u2019d literally kill the actors if they tried doing it for real. It\u2019s all very visual, very stylish, very goofy, quite mad-cap, all very extreme \u2013 but all in good fun. Won\u2019t work for everyone though, but it did for me.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kung Fu Hustle (2004) \u2013 on rental. I haven\u2019t 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\u2019s Crouching Tiger,<\/p>\n

Read More Kung Fu Hustle<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}