Kung Fu
Hustle
Comedy stays
afloat in spite of many serious tone shifts
A couple
of minutes into "Kung Fu Hustle" I was glad to see a mother
take her young — I'm terrible at guessing ages, she
was maybe 7 or 8 — child out of the theater.
Kudos, with a capital K, to that parent; I doff my hat to
you. Having, the day before, watched as two parents forced
similarly aged children to cower through a screening of
"Batman Begins" (and I do mean cower), it was refreshing to
see a parent perform such a responsible act of, well,
parenting.
It's not that "Kung Fu Hustle" is grotesquely violent, but
I was caught off-guard by an opening scene of slaughter as
one violent gang is wiped out by a much worse gang. Police
officers are beaten in their own station, murders are
committed as cruel casual asides, a person has his leg
hacked off as he tries to escape, and a woman takes a
shotgun blast in the back after being assured that she will
be allowed to go free, and more.
"Oh, ha ha ha ha! That's so very funny!" is what I didn't
say to myself as the blast picked her up and knocked her
several yards through the air. You see, I, as the mother
probably expected as well, thought that "Kung Fu Hustle"
was supposed to be a comedy. That's how all the advertising
and promotional materials and the movie trailer sold it. To
come expecting to laugh, and be greeted with such carnage
is disorienting. And so that is the number one point I want
to make clear to you; if you see this in the DVD store and
read the promotional blurbs, and remember the posters and
commercials and such, well, just remember that you read it
here first; be prepared for a shocking surprise.
I have nothing against violence in movies — I've seen
far worse than "Kung Fu Hustle," but I have to admit I
wasn't sure if I wanted to stay for the movie either.
Violence is one thing, but murder played as fodder for
punchlines and cheap laughs is one of my taboos. There are
only a select handful of directors who can walk that line
successfully, and "Hustle" director Stephen Chow is not in
that list; I didn't want to sit through an hour and a half
of such nonsense.
However, I stuck it out for a few more minutes, and the
tone shifted into more of what I was expecting. In the low
rent district of Pig-Sty Alley, a couple of would-be
gangsters attempt to bully a barber into giving them a free
haircut. Refusing to be intimidated, the barber calls in
other denizens of the alley to his aide, and watching the
gangster continue in his attempts to bluff and bully while
the crowd counters him is very funny indeed.
The bulk of the movie stays true to that comic spirit of
chaotic anarchy, but there are also side trips into sudden
violence that are jarringly out of character; the whole
comic tone never does gel, and it's unclear what kind of
movie Chow was trying to make. For instance, Pig-Sty Alley
is ruled over by a domineering landlady who packs a
devasting punch and rules by fear and a wickedly sharp
tongue. When someone gets out of line she will set them
straight with a bit of slapstick straight from the Three
Stooges playbook, which was close enough to normal to be
okay, but what should we make of it when she suddenly
starts running at super speed? Is Chow simply borrowing
visual cues from a Warner Bros. cartoon for comic
exaggeration, or is she literally running this fast? The
person she is chasing is running just as fast, and the
effect is that of the Chuck Jones' Coyote attempting to
rundown the Road Runner. Suddenly, the movie has shifted
into an alternate reality universe that I didn't know what
to do with. Later in the movie, events take place which
explain the super-speed running, but instead of clearing
things up, they only serve to create more confusion.
In another scene, the tone shifts dramatically yet again
with the introduction of two Kung Fu assassins hired by the
gang to fight the alley's three champions: Kung Fu Masters
who have secretly been living among the residents of
Pig-Sty Alley for years. Here, the tone shifts into the
mysticism and magic sometimes found in traditional Kung Fu
films. In an imaginatively staged scene, the two assassins
attack the champions with a stringed musical instrument
that becomes a sort of Kung Fu Gatling gun. When the
strings are stroked, the sound is transformed into sharp
metallic blades that fly out and wreak brutal havoc on the
champions, a likable trio that the audience has long since
embraced and developed a fondness for. Now, for the second
or third time the film comes to a dead halt while the
audience is expected change allegiance yet again.
There are some very good sequences and genuine laughs in
the film, and Chow himself contributes many of the laughs
and pathos as he takes his character from oafish gangster
to a surprising conclusion. There's probably bound to be
something you will find amusing in the film, but it is not
the comic romp that the promotional materials lead you to
expect, and it is probably not something for younger
children. In other movies of this kind, Chow's own "Shaolin
Soccer" for instance, the chaos is generally silly and
harmless; to kids, it's funny enough and retribution enough
if a bad guy has to smell a cow fart or something. It's a
far different story, however, when a good guy —
someone you've encouraged to root for — is suddenly
decapitated. Take this into consideration, and all should
be well.