Only a handful of Chinese martial arts stars have had real international impact: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li spring lithely to mind. That picture is changing, though, thanks to the 21st-century’s ultimate Eastern hero, Stephen Chow — an unassuming guy with a distinctive magic touch. Quentin Tarantino has already paid homage to this award-winning writer/director/performer, calling him “the best actor working in Hong Kong”.
Cult quirks and mainstream kicks collide breathlessly in Chow’s films, including his crossover hit Shaolin Soccer (which opened in the UK last year), and his latest, Kung Fu Hustle. Set in 1940s Shanghai, this adventure depicts a city terrorised by dapper thugs the Axe Gang — until the poor residents of Pigsty Alley reveal incredible abilities. Martial arts tradition is spliced with big-budget effects and crossover flair from the outset (the film had an estimated budget of $20 million), the Axe Gang’s formation dance routines evoke glossy music videos, while the fight sequences are lavishly choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping (who has also worked on such global blockbusters as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix and Tarantino’s Kill Bill films). The Hollywood Reporter has lauded its tricky blend as “downright postmodern”.
It comes as no surprise, however, to learn that Chow is a lifelong Bruce Lee devotee. “I was always inspired by his confidence, his energy,” he says. At school in Shanghai, he even studied martial arts under one of Lee’s peers.
But what really lends the slapstick violence of Kung Fu Hustle a special edge are its surprisingly poignant moments. These are due largely to the ambiguous main character of Sing — a hapless, would-be assassin (“I realised that good guys never win. I want to be bad. I want to be the killer!”), played with immense enthusiasm by Chow.
“I always liked the tradition of the anti-hero,” says Chow, a neat, youthful-looking 43-year-old who will sometimes break off conversation to note new English words in his vocabulary.
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“Right from the beginning of my work, I wanted to capture a mass audience. And I love the unusual: you never see dancing villains. For me, there’s a fine line between comedy and drama; so it’s not just played for laughs. There’s a little romance in this story, too — something for everybody.” The whole world loves an underdog, it seems — especially one who seeks redemption; Sing eventually places his faith in “Buddha’s Palm” spirituality.
Kung Fu Hustle has now surpassed Chow’s last film, Shaolin Soccer, to become Hong Kong’s highest-grossing home-grown film (around HK $60 million), and it swept the boards at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards, from Best Actor and Picture to Best Action Choreography and Sound Effects.
The film has also so far taken more than $16 million in the notoriously subtitle-phobic American market, and bears the distinction of having the widest cinematic release yet granted to a foreign film in the USA, exploding from seven screens on its opening weekend in April, to more than 2,500. Word of mouth, and the film’s physical comedy, apparently overcame any language barrier.
Although Shaolin Soccer was eventually well received by UK audiences (and its CG visual gags did endless rounds on the internet), I ask how Chow felt when Miramax’s clumsy distribution delayed its cinema release by three years. “Did it?” he replies, bemused. “I had no idea.”
Oops — maybe it’s best not to open that can of worms. But then, Chow’s Eastern superstar status is now so established that you can understand him being very laid-back about winning Western recognition and accolades. It’s worth considering, too, that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith took a modest $3.37 million in its opening week in China, faring relatively poorly compared with Kung Fu Hustle — and that collectively, Chow’s films out-gross even Jackie Chan’s.
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Chow is something of a Renaissance man, having begun his acting career in the 1980s by presenting the kids’ TV show Space Shuttle 430 (despite admitting that he didn’t particularly like children); incidentally, his co-host was another future film star, the arthouse heart-throb Tony Leung.
By the early 1990s, he had earned his big-screen break by starring in a prolific series of Hong Kong film parodies, which revealed a broad array of influences; his own directorial debut was a James Bond spoof, From Beijing with Love (1994). As a charismatic performer, he has also coined a modern comedy phenomenon known in Cantonese as “mou lei tau” — this roughly translates as “nonsense humour ”, referring to Chow’s absurdist wordplay, which has been likened to Monty Python.
Some of these details might be hard for foreign mainstream audiences to appreciate, but it helps that Chow’s surreal wit does translate very effectively without alienating a cult film fan base. Kung Fu Hustle’s many imaginative touches include a deadly stringed instrument played by a pair of blind assassins, and a knock-out move known as the “lion’s roar”, while “the world’s greatest killer ” (played by the martial arts veteran Siu Lung Leung) disarmingly wears flip-flops. Much of the fighting action bears a distinctly cartoonish feel — in particular, there is an hilarious chase sequence involving Sing and Pigsty Alley’s formidable Landlady (played by the actress Yuen Qiu, who went on a sumo wrestler’s diet for her role).
“I was always a big fan of cartoons such as Road Runner,” Chow explains. “So I was never very worried about making the action look realistic.” At times, Chow himself takes on a similarly animated appearance; flexing his arms and pretending to lift weights at high speed, he exclaims: “I trained for months to get fit and strong for this film — and not just for the martial arts acting; my biggest challenge was being everywhere at once!” He mimes a madcap dash around the multistorey set: “Perhaps I’ll just relax for a while.”
He suggests this with a wry smile; there have already been rumours of a sequel, or that Chow will direct Jim Carrey in a Hollywood remake of one of his films. Whatever his next move is, Kung Fu Hustle’s super-stylised action has never seemed more fashionable — and this multifaceted superstar is unlikely to run out of steam.