Kung Fu Hustle Movie Tamil
Vittoria Pretlow
Kung Fu Hustle (Chinese: 功夫; lit. 'Kung Fu') is a 2004 martial arts action comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Stephen Chow, who also stars in the leading role, alongside Huang Shengyi, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Danny Chan Kwok-kwan and Leung Siu-lung in prominent roles. The story revolves around a murderous neighbourhood gang, a poor village with unlikely heroes and an aspiring gangster's fierce journey to find his true self. The martial arts choreography is supervised by Yuen Woo-ping.
The film was a co-production between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese companies, filmed in Shanghai. After the commercial success of Shaolin Soccer, its production company, Star Overseas, began to develop the films with Columbia Pictures Asia in 2002. It features a number of retired actors famous for 1970s Hong Kong action cinema and has been compared to contemporary and influential wuxia films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. The cartoon special effects in the film, accompanied by traditional Chinese music, are often cited as its most striking feature.
Kung Fu Hustle was released on 23 December 2004 in China and on 25 January 2005 in the United States. The film received positive reviews and grossed US$17 million in North America and US$84 million in other regions. It was tenth on the list of highest-grossing foreign-language films in the United States as well as the highest-grossing foreign-language film in the country in 2005. Kung Fu Hustle won numerous awards, including six Hong Kong Film Awards and five Golden Horse Awards. The film was re-released in 3D in October 2014 across Asia and America, marking the tenth anniversary of the film.
In 1940s Shanghai, petty crooks Sing and Bone aspire to join the notorious Axe Gang, led by the cold-blooded killer, Brother Sum. The pair visit a rundown slum known as Pigsty Alley to extort the residents by pretending to be Axe members. Sing's actions eventually attract attention of the real gang, who confront the villagers. Gang reinforcements arrive but they are all quickly dealt with by three of the slum's tenants: Coolie, Tailor, and Donut, who are actually kung fu masters. However, fearing the Axe Gang's retaliation, the slum's Landlady evicts the trio.
Brother Sum captures Sing and Bone, intending to kill them for posing as gang members. However, Sing and Bone narrowly escape, impressing Brother Sum, who offers to let them join the Axe Gang, on the condition that they kill someone. Sing recalls his childhood to Bone when he was tricked by a vagrant into buying a martial arts pamphlet with his meager savings. After practicing the pamphlet's Buddhist Palm technique, Sing attempted to save a mute girl named Fong from bullies, but was instead beaten and humiliated. Sing became adamant that heroes never win, and resolved to be a villain.
Sing and Bone return to Pigsty Alley to kill the Landlady, but fail and are chased off the premises. Sing retreats to a traffic pulpit where his injuries mysteriously heal instantly. Meanwhile, Brother Sum, intent on vengeance against Pigsty Alley, hires two Harpists that use a magical guzheng as their weapon. They successfully eliminate the three masters, but are defeated by the Landlady and her husband the Landlord, who reveal themselves to be skilled fighters as well.
A frustrated Sing attempts to rob an ice cream vendor, but discovers that she is actually Fong. When she recognizes him and offers him a lollipop, which reminds him of the day he tried to save her, he smashes it and leaves in shame. Brother Sum offers Sing immediate gang membership if he uses his lock-picking skills to free the Beast, a legendary assassin, from a mental asylum. Sing succeeds and brings the Beast back to the Axe Gang's headquarters.
Brother Sum is initially skeptical of the Beast due to his flippant attitude and sloppy appearance, but quickly changes his mind when the Beast stops a bullet midair. The Beast meets the Landlady and Landlord at the casino next door, engaging them in a fierce fight that ends in a stalemate. Sing, realizing the error of his ways, attacks the Beast, who angrily retaliates. The Landlady and Landlord grab the unconscious Sing and flee. The Beast eliminates Brother Sum and takes over as leader of the Axes.
The Landlady and Landlord treat Sing at Pigsty Alley and are surprised by his quick recovery. The Landlady deduces Sing is, in fact, a natural-born kung fu genius. With his newfound powers, Sing effortlessly dispatches the Axes before fighting the Beast. Sing uses the Buddhist Palm technique to neutralize the Beast, who concedes defeat.
Sing and Bone open a candy store with Fong's lollipop as their logo. Fong visits Sing at his store, and the pair embrace. The vagrant who sold the pamphlet to Sing can be seen outside selling other pamphlets.
The climate of the film industry and the expectation of a 21st-century action film were different throughout the history of Chinese cinema. However, this difference provides one of the reasons why Kung Fu Hustle was so well received.
Directors and their contemporaries changed the martial arts cinema together to gain more universal appeal.[8] The work has built martial arts as a viable mode of behavioural expression in the movie, and also displayed how martial arts could be transformed in the cinema industry to reflect both "contemporary local issues and the increasingly important reality of globalization."[8] Unlike Ang Lee's wuxia film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Stephen Chow chose to use the perspective of a lowly gangster to break into Wuxia and Jianghu. Kung Fu does not succeed because it is so localised. Quite the contrary, Kung Fu Hustle embodies a complex transnationalism.[9]
While martial arts began a new wave in Chinese cinema, Stephen Chow and other directors were responsible for the creation of another subset of martial arts cinema, which included the vampire genre. Stephen Chow combined elements such as undead, Taoism, kung fu, as well as comedy into his movies, which helped create a comedy-horror feel that was distinct to Hong Kong.[8] The beginning of martial arts movies has paved the future for both local and international directors. They started to learn and adopt martial arts to fulfill and satisfy their own demands, later the trend became a transnational market.[8]
Different from traditional Chinese wuxia cinema, Chow's new kung fu movies help with reflecting the extent of the globalisation within the entertainment industry, which later influenced the local construction of self-identity.[8]
Kung Fu Hustle is a co-production of the Beijing Film Studio and Hong Kong's Star Overseas.[10] After the success of his 2001 film, Shaolin Soccer, Chow was approached in 2002 by Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, offering to collaborate with him on a project. Chow accepted the offer, and the project eventually became Kung Fu Hustle.[11] Kung Fu Hustle was produced with a budget of US$20 million.[12]
Chow was inspired to create the film by the martial arts films he watched as a child and by his childhood ambition to become a martial artist.[13] A senior Hollywood executive said Chow was "forced to grind through four successive scripts" and "found it very laborious".[14]
Chow's first priority was to design the main location of the film, "Pigsty Alley". Later in an interview Chow remarked that he had created the location from his childhood, basing the design on the crowded apartment complexes of Hong Kong where he had lived.[15][16] The 1973 Shaw Brothers Studio film, The House of 72 Tenants, was another inspiration for Pigsty Alley.[17] Designing the Alley began in January 2003 and took four months to complete. Many of the props and furniture in the apartments were antiques from all over China.[18]
Kung Fu Hustle features several prolific Hong Kong action cinema actors from the 1970s. Yuen Wah, a former student of the China Drama Academy Peking Opera School who appeared in over a hundred Hong Kong films and was a stunt double for Bruce Lee, played the Landlord of Pigsty Alley. Wah considered starring in Kung Fu Hustle to be the peak of his career. In spite of the film's success, he worried that nowadays fewer people practice martial arts.[19]
Auditions for the role of the Landlady began in March 2003. Yuen Qiu, who did not audition, was spotted during her friend's screen test smoking a cigarette with a sarcastic expression on her face, which won her the part.[20] Qiu, a student of Yu Jim-yuen, sifu of the China Drama Academy, had appeared in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun at the age of 18.[21] After a number of other small roles, she retired from films in the 1980s. Kung Fu Hustle was her first role in nineteen years. Qiu, in order to fulfill Chow's vision for the role, gained weight for the role by eating midnight snacks every day.[21]
Bruce Leung, who played the Beast, was Stephen Chow's childhood martial arts hero.[16] Leung Siu Lung was a famous action film director and actor in the 1970s and 1980s, known as the "Third Dragon" after Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. After becoming unpopular in the Taiwanese film market in the late 1980s following a visit to China, he switched to a career in business. Kung Fu Hustle was his return to the film industry after a fifteen-year hiatus. He regarded Chow as a flexible director with high standards, and was particularly impressed by the first scene involving the Beast, which had to be reshot 28 times.[22]
In addition to famous martial artists, Kung Fu Hustle features legends of Chinese cinema. Two famous Chinese directors appear in the film: Zhang Yibai, who plays Inspector Chan at the beginning of the film, and Feng Xiaogang, who plays the boss of the Crocodile Gang.[23]
In casting Sing's love interest Fong, Chow stated that he wanted an innocent looking girl for the role. Television actress Eva Huang, in her film debut, was chosen from over 8,000 women. When asked about his decision in casting her, Chow said that he "just had a feeling about her" and that he enjoyed working with new actors. She chose to have no dialogue in the film so that she could stand out only with her body gestures.[20][24]
c80f0f1006