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.
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 embraces the Buddha and uses the Buddhist Palm to neutralize the Beast, who concedes defeat.
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]
Hong Kong director and film critic Gabriel Wong praised the film for its black comedy, special effects and nostalgia, citing the return of many retired kung fu actors from the 1970s.[67] Film critic Roger Ebert's description of the film ("like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny") was printed on the promotion posters for the film in the US.[68][69] Other critics described it as a comedic version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.[70] Positive reviews generally gave credit to the elements of mo lei tau comedy present in the film.[71] A number of reviewers viewed it as a computer-enhanced Looney Tunes punch-up.[53][72] In a 2010 interview, actor Bill Murray called Kung Fu Hustle "the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy".[73] In 2021, American filmmaker James Gunn called it "the greatest film ever made".[74]
Much of the criticism for the film was directed at its lack of character development and a coherent plot. Las Vegas Weekly, for instance, criticised the film for not having enough of a central protagonist and character depth.[75] Criticism was also directed towards the film's cartoonish and childish humour.[76] However, it was considered reasonable, as the Kung Fu Hustle production team chose to make the film's characters largely one-dimensional. In the movie, the directors "attempt(ed) to appeal to a transnational audience, affirms distinctly Western notions of Chinese that many earlier Kung Fu films set out to subvert."[8] The Kung Fu Hustle team attempt to appeal to a more progressive generation throughout the history of Chinese cinema. Earlier in the kung fu film industry, it usually involved complex characters, and also tried to explore and expose constructs ranging from gender to race as well as to nation.[8] One-dimension is the key feature of Kung Fu Hustle, as it is rooted in a filmic genre that connected with Hong Kong identity, but also represented the Western imagination of China's past and Kung Fu heroism.[8]
So I've been re-watching kung fu hustle, specifically the 3 warriors scene. It has got to be probably one of my favorite fights ever and my favorite scene when the first started kicking ass. I have a question though.
All but one the kung fu masters from Pig Sty Alley represent real world martial arts, one of them in a more fictionalized way. The first two are depicted in a very accurate way, while the third one has been embellished for the film. Still the film transmits the essence of the three styles.
Let's start with the setting. 1940-50's Shanghai is important because that was the real birth of his kung fu film love, and Pig Sty Alley is a DIRECT REFERENCE to the 1973 Shaw Brother's classic "House of 72 tenants", which in itself was a mockery of the Chinese government's attack against the poor. Both Kung Fu Hustle and "House of 72 tenants" captured the everyday life, the struggles and celebrations, of the poor, ordinary folks of China.
The movie is centered in a Shanghai slum called Pig Sty Alley. It's ruled by a dumpy landlady (Yuen Qiu), who marches around in slippers and has one of those cartoon cigarettes that always stays in her mouth no matter what happens. Shanghai is terrorized by the Axe Gang, which mostly leaves Pig Sty Alley alone because the pickings are too slim. But when counterfeit gang members are confronted by neighborhood kung-fu fighters, the real gang moves in to take revenge. The Axe Gang doesn't exactly blend in: They all wear black suits and top hats, and carry axes. That'll make you stand out. I am reminded of Jack Lemmon's story about the time he saw Klaus Kinski buying a hatchet at Ace Hardware.
Chow not only stars and directs, but co-wrote and co-produced. We get the sense that his comedies are generated in the Buster Keaton spirit, with gags being worked out on the spot and everybody in orbit around the star, who is physically skilled, courageous and funny. Chow plays Sing, also the name of his character in "Shaolin Soccer" and at least six other movies. This time he's an imposter, pretending to be an Axe Gang member in order to run a shakedown racket in Pig Sty Alley. Imagine how inconvenient it is when the real Axe Gang shows up and he's in trouble with everyone. By the end of the movie, he's going one-and-one with The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), in a kung-fu extravaganza. The joke is that most of what Sing knows about kung fu he learned by reading a useless booklet sold to him by a con man when he was a child.
Hong King cinema is getting a makeover at the hands of writer/director/actor Stephen Chow. The Shanghai-born filmmaker and self-professed martial arts addict is one of the hottest names in Hong Kong cinema, having starred in more than 50 films and directed seven. Chows name in the west is only just getting mainstream recognition from the success of Shaolin Soccer in 2001. The quirky action-comedy film mixed kung fu, soccer and outlandish visual effects, producing what might best be described as Shaw Brothers meets The Matrix by way of the Looney Tunes. Soccer made important ripples with critics and enthusiastic cult audiences, creating enough buzz to open the door for his new follow-up film, Kung Fu Hustle (Gong fu in Asia, opening April 8 on a limited basis).
While Hustle is primarily a martial arts film, Chow also introduces a myriad of other styles and a strong comedic tone that meant Centro had an equally diverse array of visual effects to create. Theres a lot of wire work, CG stunts and effects sequences. We shot some scenes in chroma key and composited it with a live background. There are some shots that are 100% CGI, like a shot in the casino where Stephen wanted us to break all of the casino up with a kind of kung fu, called Lion Roar. Its almost like a sound effect. He wanted us to break all the walls, so we had to create the scene totally with CGI. The main difference between this one and Shaolin Soccer, was that this one is full 2K resolution, Cineon tech scan. This is one is a step higher for us. We did work like it on Kill Bill, but this one has a lot more effects shots compared to Kill Bill. We did a lot of preparation for this one and revised the pipeline in order to work in a 10-bit film. We also did the digital intermediary for this movie, so the whole movie was scanned using a Thomson Spirit Datacine scanner and it was color corrected in Quantel IQ.
Despite their presence on the set for principle photography, Tom admits Chow did spring a few post-production surprises on the team. There are a few shots that after shooting, Stephen came back to us and wanted to add things into the scene. There is a scene in the movie where Stephen is looking for a kung-fu master called The Beast. He goes into a hospital and the master is looked behind a door. Later when Stephen came back, he wanted to add frogs on the floor. The shots are all handheld and its like in a tunnel and nothing to track. It was a hard time to track those cameras and put those CG frogs into it! But it turns out pretty good and not many people notice the frogs are CGI.
It's the 1940s, and the notorious Axe Gang terrorizes Shanghai. Small-time criminals Sing and Bone hope to join, but they only manage to make lots of very dangerous enemies. Fortunately for them, kung fu masters and hidden strength can be found in unlikely places. Now they just have to take on the entire Axe Gang.
582128177f