This high-flying action flick is genuine Kung fun.
Just over a decade ago, parents across the country were frantic over the popularity of the
Power Rangers
, a Karate-chopping kids' TV export from Japan. A generation of American children were imitating the stunts they saw on TV, doing crane-kicks into ottomans and
tapping into their inner ninjas with their
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remote controls. Now, halfway through the first decade of the new century, it's finally the adults' turn.
Stephen Chow made a name for himself in Hong Kong cinema with films like
King of Destruction
and, more recently,
Shaolin Soccer
. His comedic skills have made him a kind of action Chaplin. With
Kung Fu Hustle
, the writer-director has unleashed a live-action frolic full of staggering fights, zany special effects and classic slapstick humor.
Set in Hong Kong in the 1940s, the film follows young Sing (Chow) as he attempts to join the Axe Gang, a heartless group of gangsters who run the city. Sing makes the mistake of trying to rough up the locals in Pig Sty Alley, a poor area of town where the gang has no influence, igniting a battle between the axe-wielding, gun-toting gangsters and the alley's seemingly helpless residents. When the gangsters are sent home with their weapons tucked between their legs by the Kung Fu skills of unassuming alley dwellers, the Axe Gang craves revenge.
Early on, the film's slapstick humor is the star of the show in the form of the drunken and flirtatious Landlord (Wah Yuen) and his screaming, chain smoking wife (Qiu Yuen), but Chow relinquishes all laws of physics, space and time as the
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action begins. Taking his cue from old Warner Brothers cartoons, Chow turns his actors into human animations,
dropping flower pots and firecrackers on their heads, dropping them from windows and sticking them with knives.
Chow ignores the pretense of suspension of disbelief during the chase scenes, leaving logic in the dust. When Sing returns to the Alley to kill the Landlady for the Axe Gang, the would-be assassin is spotted and run out of town by his target, beginning a Roadrunner- and Wile E Coyote-like chase down a highway that features the characters dodging passing trucks, jumping through the air and turning their legs into swirling blurs of speed.
Hustle
might not inspire you to spar with your neighbors or take up street fighting, but the jaw-dropping action and cartoon-inspired antics just might renew your faith in an ever-declining action genre.
