Kung Fu Hustle (2005)

"...a delirious mix of the sublime and the silly...[Chow] has taken the kung fu comedy genre to new heights of chop-socky hilarity.  Andrew Sun, The Hollywood Reporter
"...it seems to whirr every kung-fu movie ever made into the most luscious action smoothie you'll ever imbibe.  David Edelstein, Slate
"Think Kill Bill meets Looney Tunes.  Entertainment Weekly
"Don't miss it! Exhilaratingly hilarious!  Lou Lumenick, New York Post
"...[Chow is] a one-man comedy parade...dumb fun this smart is a gift.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Editor's Note Stephen Chow's follow-up to SHAOLIN SOCCER ups the over-the-top action quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow--who wrote, produced, and directed--doesn't step in as the star here for quite a while, letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabers from lyre strings, and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named "the Beast" (Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers. Buoyed by SOCCER's box office success, HUSTLE uses bigger production values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts (imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in THE MATRIX). It's full of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti westerns and '70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino's KILL BILL (fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping worked on both films). It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W. Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong's inspired score matches each cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera circles and swoops around the sprawling sets. This is a real treat, more than a great action film or comedy, it's a great film period, and one that set box office records in the East.

	Stephen Chow
	Wah Yuen
	Xiaogang Feng
	Zhi Hua Dong
	Angie Lam - Editor
	Bill Borden - Executive Producer
	Hang-Sang Poon - Cinematographer
	Oliver Wong - Production Designer
	Second Chan - Art Director
	Stephen Chow - Director
	Stephen Chow - Producer
	Stephen Chow, et. al. - Original Music By
	Stephen Chow, et. al. - Writer

Entertainment Weekly
"[An] insanely entertaining smash-fantasy burlesque....You don't just watch it, you ride with it, laughing all the way." 04/15/2005 p.60

Los Angeles Times
"For all its extreme cartoonish violence, KUNG FU HUSTLE is a surprisingly sweet and charming movie." 04/08/2005 p.E8

New York Times
"The showstopping fight sequences are choreographed by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping and given an extra jolt of nutty inventiveness by some cheerfully crude digital effects." 04/08/2005 p.E21

Sight and Sound
"That one can indeed call KUNG FU HUSTLE delightful reflects its wonderfully compelling, high wire sense of dreamy knockabout..." 05/01/2005 p.64

USA Today
"HUSTLE's approach to a simple good-vs.-evil plot is eccentrically exuberant." 04/22/2005 p.4E

Rolling Stone
"[Chow is] a one-man comedy parade....[He] turns his characters into live-action cartoons and then, miraculously, makes it all ring true." 04/21/2005 p.124

Uncut
"[N]o one's ever captured the escapist thrill of a four-coloured splash panel as well as Chow does here." 07/01/2005 p.128

Movieline's Hollywood Life
"[I]n terms of physical timing, comic ideas and snap-crackle-pop filmmaking it buries any 10 other American comedies you can think of." 09/01/2005 p.101

Uncut
Ranked #14 in Uncut's Best Films Of 2005 -- "[A] blast of exuberant, over-the-top cinematic madness....Ridiculously entertaining." 01/01/2006 p.82-83

ReelViews 8 of 10
Kung Fu Hustle is an action/comedy designed with lovers of the '60s and '70s Shaw Brothers' movies in mind. It's an homage to a genre that, despite being regarded as campy by about 95% of the movie-going populace, has nevertheless captured the hearts and minds of thousands of loyalists. Stephen Chow, Kung Fu Hustle's director/writer/producer/star, is one such person. His love of those old movies is evident in every frame this picture...Kung Fu Hustle is designed for an international audience, so it should come as no surprise that there numerous references will leap off the screen to an average American movie-goer (including nods to The Shining, The Untouchables, Gangs of New York, and The Matrix, amongst others)...Kung Fu Hustle should get a chance in a respectable number of theaters, and viewers will discover that the film has something to offer nearly everyone, whether they are a novice or a black belt in kung fu cinema. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Lurking beneath the surface of most good martial arts movies is a comedy. Sometimes it bubbles up to the top, as in Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle." The joke is based not so much on humor as on delight: The characters have overcome the laws of gravity and physics. To be able to leap into the air, spin in a circle and kick six, seven, eight, nine enemies before landing in a graceful crouch is enormously gratifying...This is the kind of movie where you laugh occasionally and have a silly grin most of the rest of the time...When I saw it at Sundance, I wrote that it was "like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny." You see how worked up you can get, watching a movie like this. - Roger Ebert