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Kung Fu Hustle
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Like her “Kung Fu Hustle” co-star Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu was one of the famous Seven Little Fortunes (the childhood Peking Opera performing troupe which ... included Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung). She started her martial arts training in the Peking Opera school at the age of 10. After 7 years of training, Yuen Qiu began her movie career as a stunt person and became one of the very few well-known stunt women in the Hong Kong movie industry at that time. Her first feature film role was in the 1973 movie “Not Scared to Die”, starring Jackie Chan. Later, she had a brief appearance in the James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun”.
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One of the most significant underdog figures in this post-1997 film Kung Fu Hustle is the child. In Kung Fu Hustle, Sing is an orphan/ nomad as the film never shows him having a home, family or parents. He drifts around in the street as a child as well as an adult. The xia hero is an extension of this kind of nomadic character, who prefers a wandering life in jianghu instead of stability in the mainstream society. Childhood/ youth is often doubly inscribed with nostalgia, standing for a lost time and for innocence. However, children represented in the socio-political reality created in Hong Kong cinema before and after 1997 are no longer bearers of innocence.
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It's been a long time — you might have to go back to the Bruce Lee era — since a martial-arts film busted through the limits of physical freedom as wildly, and promiscuously, as Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow's insanely entertaining smash-fantasy burlesque. Chow, perhaps the first action star and filmmaker to be as influenced by classic cartoons as by the karate-chop balletics of human movement, directs like a gonzo fusion of Tarantino and Tex Avery. You know where every punch and kick is coming from, but it's far less clear what will happen after they land. Bodies go flying into space, and faces get pummeled until they end up somewhere beneath the ground. At one point, two men conduct a battle by strumming notes on a stringed instrument: Each note sends forth a quasi-visible gust of air, which crests into a wave of force so sharp that it reveals itself on screen as a shower of knives. The scene creates its own nutty physics, and all of Kung Fu Hustle is like that: You don't just watch it, you ride with it, laughing all the way.
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Kung Fu Hustle calls attention to the spirit of martial arts as a means for self-improvement and defense instead of simply attacking and defeating opponents. The ultimate martial arts hero is the one who is able to win over his opponent’s heart by peace and forgiveness instead of violence and revenge. In contrast to the Matrix films, Kung Fu Hustle combines choreography and special effects to finally poke fun at perpetual confrontation as the ultimate way of conflict resolution, if not life itself. By blending choreography with CGI, Chow’s film not only appeals to contemporary audiences enamored with new technologies, but it ... integrates an imaginative spirit and revitalizes the story elements of wuxia culture. Kung Fu Hustle’s concern is not with returning to a utopian past and condemning the present, but instead with constructing a virtual world blending old and new images that inform and function in dialogue with each other, showing how past and present can mutually shape each other.
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In Kung Fu Hustle, Sing as a child faces the harsh reality of having his dream of becoming a xia shattered, as he was deceived by the homeless man who sells him a useless kung fu manual. Xia is a mythical and fictional figure that recuperates popular imagination as an antidote to the oppressive reality. The heroic and individualistic image of the knight-errant may pose a real threat to the official and nationalist ideology, but it can ... be manipulated by patriarchal myths of loyalty and brotherhood. Despite a xia’s seemingly unlimited freedom, Sing as an adult does not consider that as the register for his final fantasy. In the end Sing chooses to retreat from jianghu and entertains the political neutrality of a childhood fantasyland rather than becoming a xia who possesses the unbeatable Buddhist’s Palm martial skills. Through playfulness and childish humor, Kung Fu Hustle registers the utopian vision and ongoing discovery of becoming a child, not in reality but fantasy.
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Kung Fu Hustle's 《功夫》 purportedly 10-minute trailer will be attached to Spiderman 2 when it gets released in China on August 5. Both films are owned by Columbia Pictures. Kungfu Hustle expects to be released in December. Shanghai Youth
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