15, 99mins
ASIAN fight directors such as the revered Yuen Wo Ping, who has worked with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and on such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, have rigged some of the greatest box-office surprises in the past ten years. When Dirty Harry retired his Magnum, the Hollywood blockbuster looked East. Stunt craftsmen like Ping have been greasing the rails ever since.
Yet the credibility of martial art movies — wherever they are shot — hinges on the star. Stephen Chow is the writer, director, producer and comic hero of Kung Fu Hustle. He has the charm of a drooping leek, and the charisma of a paper clip. He is a superstar in Asia after Shaolin Soccer (2001), but his first co-production with a major US studio (Columbia) has the originality of an easyJet lunchtime menu. His ego is impregnable; the arrogance is annoying; and his transformation from a street bum Bozo to kick-ass saviour is as simple-minded as his cast.
The story is set in pre-Revolutionary China, a tribal age when gangs were run by young psychopaths in smart black suits, Victorian toppers, and who had rotten teeth. Chow’s middle-aged urchin provides the Benny Hill glue.
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The sets are designed by Mr E. Wood, the plot by Mr Q. Tarantino. The evil dudes in the Axe chapter carry hatchets and Bugsy Malone machine-guns. They line-dance to poppy songs as they butcher their rivals. The violence is Penny Dreadful. The vendettas are musical cartoons. The arty camera angles are a medley of slow-motion amputations and jaw-shuddering thumps. Chow is cannonballed through 13 separate walls after one well-aimed boot. I nearly cheered. It’s that kind of match.
The modest trump card is that the villains seem cinematically unbeatable. The catchy twist is that they are knocked senseless by a tiny cabal of elderly kung fu peasants in a piddly village called Pig Sty. Humiliation fuels the next two reels. The Axes hire a nutter called Leung Siu Lung, a veteran “chop socky” villain, whom they kidnap from a mental asylum. He is paunchy, old and deeply unimpressive until he holds a gun six inches from his head, pulls the trigger and catches the bullet.
The fleeting and precarious pleasure of this preposterous fantasy is the eerie beauty of these action set pieces. Most of them are woven by Yeun Wo Ping. The entire philosophy of kung fu seems to unfold before your eyes. But his director has a tortuous desire to please. Chow’s transparent ambition is to emulate Bruce Lee.
The result is a ghastly splurge of digital effects. There is none of the formality or rigour of dramas such as House of Flying Daggers. The manners are missing. The film sags with primitive melodrama. It laughs too heartily at its own jokes. A film that defies the laws of gravity at every opportunity tends to defy much serious interest.