Movies - Kung Fu Hustle

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	Movies - Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu Hustle () is a martial arts film first released in Hong Kong in December 2004. It was released for general debut in the United States on April 22nd, 2005 after showing in Los Angeles and New York for two weeks. The North American version of its DVD was released on August 8th, 2005.

Kung Fu Hustle is a humorous parody and mockery of the wuxia genre, played and directed by Stephen Chow. It contains most of the characteristics of a typical wuxia movie, with a lot of ridiculous exaggerations, serious situations and comic plots.

The use of visual effects have been widely acclaimed and the almost comic book style of the movie are its most striking features. It is in stark contrast to recent Kung Fu movies that have made an impact in the West, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
and Hero. Despite the computer-generated imagery and cartoonish scenes in the second half of the movie, the movie pays tribute to many famous Kung Fu film veterans from the 1970s who were all real martial artists on their own right. Many early fight scenes were packed with real Chinese martial arts.

Plot

The movie is set in Shanghai around the 1940s. It tells the story of two homeless young men who pretend to be the members of the ruthless triad called the Axe Gang. Their extortion scheme fails when the victims fight back, and the plot thickens when the real Axe Gang shows up. Meanwhile, the run-down tenement that is being attacked, the Pig Sty, turns out to count amongst its residents superhuman kung-fu fighters. They reveal themselves in turn. Sing, who was one of the homeless men, comes into his superhero kung-fu powers as a result of being beaten until every bone was broken. He saves the day by defeating the Axe Gang's leaders and its hired assassins.

Martial artists

Sing

The protagonist of the movie, who initially seems to be a normal man with no martial arts training, ultimately uses an immensely-powerful technique called Buddha's Palm, which can project attacks into buildings, the ground, and other solid objects in the shape of a massive palm. He also has the personal ability to completely regenerate any injuries, recovering in one instance from multiple stab wounds.

However, until the film's conclusion, Sing cannot use the Buddha's Palm technique, and while he is eventually found to be one of the extremely-rare folk with large reserves of qi, his energy points are blocked, and thus he cannot make use of it.

What happens to Sing follows a very typical wuxia film plot. When he was a child, a crazy man sold him a secret manual (mìjí 秘笈) on Buddha's palm (which happens to be a manual that many people have bought very cheaply). Using the manual, he studied Buddha's Palm with no success. After his metamorphosis in the film (this theme was played out during the movie; a butterfly was hatching from its cocoon while he was emerging from his own cocoon-like full-body bandage cast during his healing process), his knowledge of Buddha's Palm has finally matured.

Landlord

The Landlord, a man dominated by his wife, is a master of Taijiquan, trained to the point where he is able to deflect blows aimed directly at him away from his body, move with the lightness and grace of a falling feather, and evade most attacks anyone can bring to bear against him.

During the encounter with the Harpists, the Landlord has them mostly hitting each other instead of him, despite being directly in the middle between them.

Landlady

The chain-smoking violent wife of the Landlord, the Landlady practices a somewhat exaggerated version of a martial art called the Lion's roar (狮吼功), which enables her to generate a roar-like yell from her mouth powerful enough to tear the plaster off walls and lift men off the ground like ragdolls. A passive side-effect is that she can easily raise her voice loud enough to overpower a group of a hundred or so people speaking loudly in unison.

The origin of Lion's Roar came from ho'dong si, a Chinese idiom which translates in the English language to "the lion east of the river", which is slang for a dominating wife.

Her power in one case was augmented by using a large brass bell as a megaphone, generating so much force it managed to injure and temporarily stun the Beast.

The Beast (火雲邪神 in Traditional Chinese)

Incarcerated in a mental institution for alleged insanity, the Beast is the most powerful known martial artist alive. His appearance is no indication of his power; a disheveled old man with seemingly no physical fitness whatsoever and suffering from a receding hairline. However, the man is deserving of his title; he catches bullets with ease, leaps with enough force to crack the floor upon landing, drives kicks to the ground with enough power to create shockwaves that demolish walls, and can survive damage that would kill anyone else.

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