Kung Fu Hustle!

In Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow expertly blends slapstick comedy, over-the-top kung fu martial arts and dramatic elements into one enormously hilarious and hugely entertaining film. It is a film that does not take itself too seriously -- its characters aren't very complex or at all realistic, but we love them all the same. Much of this love comes from the intentionally liberal use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and spoofs of common storytelling clichés and popular films and idols. Using these techniques to comedic effect, Chow has made this movie distinctly appealing to an international audience.

Kung Fu Hustle delivers Chow-style comedy and martial arts at the outset. The audience is shown the Axe Gang's terrible crimes portrayed through flashing newspaper front pages, the Axe Gang in perfectly ironed black suits (a respectable Hong Kong gangster must), and its leader Brother Sum leading a dance routine. The film then flips to Pig Sty Alley, a rural tenement akin to an Old Western-style outpost, where the movie's protagonist Sing (Chow) is trying to pass off as an Axe for a free haircut for his friend. The Alley's tenants refuse to back down, and the real Axe Gang coincidentally arrives. A massive Matrix-, or Kill Bill, if you will, style fight ensues, in which three Pig Sty tenants are revealed to be kung fu masters in disguise.

Unfortunately, these kung fu masters are killed by assassins hired by Brother Sum, suddenly pulling the film into a melodramatic gear and revealing Pig Sty's true kung fu masters -- the lecherous landlord and chain-smoking landlady. Breaking a vow not to fight, they go to the Axe Gang's lair. There, however, they encounter The Beast, an old, shaggy man who is faster than bullets. A brawl, of course, follows, culminating in a stalemate. Sing is then tasked with hitting the landlord and landlady, at which point he realizes an epiphany and hits The Beast, who beats him down. After reviving, we learn that Sing was really a kung fu god with blocked up qi (energy flow), and he faces off with The Beast in the film’s final boss fight.

Throughout the film, CGI effects are used to a point of parody but with stunning effect in combination with Chow's brand of choreographed martial arts. Much of this can be attributed to top-level choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the Wachowshi Brothers' The Matrix, and Centro Digital Pictures Limited, which provided CG effects for Chow's first internationally acclaim film, Shaolin Soccer, and Tarantino's Kill Bill. Cues taken from these movies can clearly be seen in the film's final fight sequence, evidencing as hordes of black-suited men wielding axes toppled like dominoes, bouncing off walls like Spiderman, and a sudden mid-air epiphany (incidentally coming at the call of an eagle). Not even Bruce Lee is safe, as Sing poses victoriously.

Why all this borrowing and poaching? Chow makes it clear that this film was meant for an international audience -- and that he "hopes that his poaches from Hollywood will culturally deodorize his films." After all, Hollywood has been poaching ideas from Asian films for a long time (The Departed comes to mind), so why shouldn't he?

At the same time, Chow makes Kung Fu Hustle also a distinctly Hong Kong film, paying homage to a variety of past Hong Kong and Chinese traditions. Regarded by Columbia Pictures East Asia, the film's financer, as a strategy of "global localization," Kung Fu Hustle distinctly references older Hong Kong films, including The House of 72 Tenants, from which Pig Sty Alley was 'lifted', and the Buddhist Palm school of martial arts, which many older Hong Kong martial arts films use, buddha-in-the-clouds and four-story-handprints notwithstanding.

Ultimately, Kung Fu Hustle is really a brilliant play by Chow to capture a global audience with a well-executed, hilarious film with both local and global storytelling and cinematographic elements. It's a win-win situation -- Chow gets his money and fame, we get great entertainment.