| |
Review
by Kozo: |
It's
great, but also kind of sad. 2004 has been a veritable
box-office wasteland for Hong Kong Cinema, with the
highest grossing film being Fantasia at approximately
$25 million dollars. Then it takes all of one week
for Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle to eclipse
the grosses of every other HK film AND resurrect interest
in the local film market. How can one man succeed
where Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng and Johnnie
To fail? What's the secret to Chow's ability to break
the bank? Special effects? Slapstick comedy? The ability
to make an entertaining movie? No Wong Jing? The likely
answer: all of the above. Kung Fu Hustle may
not be best Hong Kong film of the year, but its commercial
instincts and eclectic mixture of elements makes it
an absolute winner. For sheer entertainment value,
nothing else in 2004 comes close.
Stephen Chow is Sing,
a downtrodden dope in 1930s Shanghai who aspires to
be a member of the Axe Gang, the top triad in the
region. Led by Brother Sum (Chan Kwok-Kwan of Shaolin
Soccer), the Axe Gang rules all thanks to their
stylish attire, keen axe-throwing skills, and above
all their toe-tapping rhythm. Besides ruling the streets
of Shanghai with an iron fist (or axe), the gang breaks
out into spontaneous dance numbers, and even Brother
Sum likes to boogie after blowing someone away with
a shotgun. Sing can't really expect to become a member
of the Axe Gang because he's useless and a poor bluffer.
He and his tubby sidekick (Lam Chi-Chung of Shaolin
Soccer) pretend to be Axe Gang members to shakedown
the local slum Pigsty Alley, but their antics cause
more personal pain than profit. Even the lowest resident
of Pigsty Alley seems equipped to deal with the pathetic
pair. But can the residents of Pigsty Alley stand
up to the real Axe Gang?
The easy answer: yes,
they can. Sing's shenanigans cause the real Axe Gang
to show up, but before the gang can get their groove
on, they're shown up by three hidden martial arts
masters who make their presence known in grand exaggerated
kung-fu style. Thanks to nifty special effects and
fun fight choreography, these martial arts masters
can take on scores of foes with all the hard-hitting,
slow-mo, bullet-time panache that Stephen Chow and
his fight choreographers (Yuen Woo-Ping and, briefly,
Sammo Hung) can muster. The Axe Gang can only counter
with their own martial arts masters, plucked from
the countryside or maybe even the local mental hospital,
which leads to even more CG-enhanced fight sequences.
The back-and-forth between the Pigsty residents and
the increasingly pissed-off Axe Gang forms the major
conflict of Kung Fu Hustle, but there still
remains one major player: Sing, who begins to show
shame at his chosen criminal life. Will Sing change
his tune? And if he does, can a dopey wannabe thief
even hold his own against scores of axe-wielding bad
guys AND the Beast (Leung Siu-Lung), who may be the
strongest martial artist ever?
Again, there's an easy
answer: yes, he can. This is a Stephen Chow movie,
so Stephen Chow is endowed with the ability to get
himself out of every narrative jam possible. As director,
producer, writer and supposed star of Kung Fu Hustle,
Stephen Chow brings the full complement of his cinematic
obsessions to the table in predictable, and yet enthralling
style. Long a fan of Bruce Lee, Chow apes his hero
in a number of small homages. Martial arts fiction—from
movies to comics to novels—gets referenced nonstop,
to predictable audience-pleasing effect. Chow clearly
enjoys the new creativity given to him by special
effects, and uses them to enhance the film's martial
arts in expected and hilariously exaggerated ways.
The source material is varied; the energetic and blatantly
fantastic way foes are sent flying recalls Chinese
comics and Japanese anime more than older martial
arts films, and Chow manages a few comic sequences
that are more out of Road Runner than Wong Jing. None
of this would be possible without computer graphics,
but unlike The Storm Riders or The Legend
of Zu, the CG isn't mainly for show. Like in Shaolin
Soccer, Chow uses CG imaginatively, enhancing
the physicality and energy of his action sequences
in spectacular ways. Tsui Hark, take some notes.
On the other end, Chow gives
us his usual comic shenanigans, with predictably hilarious
but somewhat labored results. The comedy in Kung
Fu Hustle seems obligatory when compared to the
action, which is a strange thing to say about a Stephen
Chow movie. It's still funny stuff, and Chow assembles
a fine ensemble of minor names and no-names as his
menagerie of caricatures and cutups. Yuen Qiu and
Yuen Wah are hilarious as Pigsty Alley's landlords,
and semi-regular Chow cohorts Lam Chi-Chung, Tin Kai-Man,
and Lam Suet provide decent support. Still, the comedy
and even the action are less interesting than the
winning way in which Chow reveals his characters'
nobility and martial arts mastery. Chow makes winners
out of losers, and rediscovers heroism in unexpected,
and seemingly unlikely ways. It's not original stuff;
the cliché of the hidden martial arts master
can be seen in everything from early Shaw Brothers
flicks all the way up to The Karate Kid or
even the Star Wars films. It's narrative shorthand
that elicits an immediate response, but Chow uses
it exceptionally well. If it weren't given such style
and audience-pleasing panache, one might even be annoyed
at how obvious and even flimsy it all is.
There's even more flimsy
stuff. Sing's love interest is his first love Fong
(Huang Sheng-Yi), a dumb mute ice cream seller whose
two brief appearances manage to shock Sing from wannabe
bad boy back to noble do-gooder. Sing himself isn't
very well developed, partially because he's given
truncated, and even isolated screen time. Chow is
more of an ensemble player than the film's star, which
is why his eventual promotion to the starring role
feels a bit odd. If anything, the stars of Kung
Fu Hustle are the residents of Pigsty Alley, and
not the wannabe gangster caught in the middle of their
conflict with the Axe Gang. When Chow eventually moves
front-and-center, it almost feels like it shouldn't
be happening. And while we're talking negatives, the
characters are underdeveloped, the conflicts uninspired,
the climax convenient, and the love story simplistic
to the point of maudlin lameness. Shaolin Soccer easily carried more emotional weight than anything
in Kung Fu Hustle.
However, the above gripes
are really only viable if you view Kung Fu Hustle as just any other movie, which it most definitely
is not. This is a Stephen Chow movie, and Stephen
Chow carries the audience clout of Jackie Chan, Chow
Yun-Fat, the Twins, the Boy'z, and probably the Twelve
Girls Band combined. Stephen Chow takes more than
a few shortcuts when giving his film emotional weight,
and ignores standard character development and even
plot construction in favor of a mishmash of commercial
elements...and it works! If anything, Chow understands
just what his audience wants, and still manages to
surprise and sometimes challenge their expectations
in wildly entertaining and enchanting ways. The keen
commercial sense demonstrated by Chow gives hope to
a future directing-only career by the veteran funnyman—if
he ever decided to stop acting and just become a filmmaker.
It's doubtful that Kung Fu Hustle would work
without Chow because it's hard to imagine that any
actor alive could play the same character and still
win audience sympathy and support so quickly and completely.
Having the main character disappear and reappear,
and be only tangentially related to the main conflict
is a complete narrative no-no, and it would be impossible
to buy if Nicholas Tse played that main character.
But this is Stephen Chow, so it's all good. Hell,
it's better. (Kozo 2005) |
|
