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It’s been a while since I sensed genuine excitement at the movies. Usually people see a movie because (a) their spouse has forced them to go; (b) they’ve been hypnotized by manufactured hype; or (c) there was nothing else to see. At Kung Fu Hustle, I felt a collective crackle of anticipation. For the most part, at least for me, that enthusiasm wasn’t felt in vain.
A Chinese import, Kung Fu Hustle may be the first wide-release postmodern kung-fu movie. The film, directed by Stephen Chow, is a hybrid of martial art fight sequences and self-referential comedy, with evilly ingenious effects thrown in. Imagine the Marx Brothers starring in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
You’ve seen the plot if you’ve seen any American western, but the film proceeds at a breakneck pace and with refreshing panache. You could say Asian cinema reclaims The Magnificent Seven, itself a Western remake of a Chinese classic.
The titular “hustle” is performed in a surreal manner early in the film by the brutal Axe Gang. As a result of bad luck, the ordinarily mercenary Axe Gang invades the impoverished Pigsty Alley to inadvertently provoke irritable kung-fu superheroes out of retirement.
One such superheroine is The Landlady (Qiu Yuen), a fat harridan who delivers merciless punches that smash metal, travels as fast as a NASCAR driver, and emits villain-shattering screams—all performed with her hair in curlers and a cigarette dangling from lips. Her womanizing husband, The Landlord (Wah Yuen), also a master fighter, possesses the ability to dodge opponents’ blows as if he is made of rubber. Another hero, the middle-aged gay Tailor (Chi Ling Chiu), deflects bullets and swords with his ersatz Wonder Woman bracelets.
Hustle so captured my fancy that I was reminded of the imaginative Sinbad movies from my childhood. That was when I wasn’t guffawing from the movie’s many laugh-out-loud moments. The genre-bending and wild hyperbole occasionally undercut the subplot—a love story between two childhood acquaintances (which doesn’t realize its full power until the last scene). Nevertheless, this movie gently tugs at your emotions. You can relax because you’re in the hands of a master storyteller.
Not that movie theaters enforce the ratings system anymore or anything, but it’s unfortunate that this movie was Rated R for violence—because this movie can be enjoyed by adults and teenagers alike.
