Kung fu hustle

It was recently brought to my attention that i had never watched a classic hong kong kung fu film, and so i decided it was about time that changed. I chose this one to start with because everyone raves about it and yeehaw i can see why.

This film is not gritty, or realistic, or well-written. What it is, is a lot of huge fights and silly jokes. And it’s all the better for it. There have been so many Very Serious films already and this one wants to be some kind of a pastiche, but it doesn’t end up feeling derivative or unoriginal. There were quite a few scenes i recognised because they are shared as standalone moments and the film is great for that. Possibly better than as a whole, because there were several moments where i wasn’t really sure what the shaky plot was going on about. But in general that didn’t matter, because there were good guys who said “i am good!” and bad guys who said “i am bad!” and they were fighting, and it was excellent.

I’m actually not sure whether this was a good entry to the genre or not, because it seems to me that it’s going to be quite different from pretty much all the other films around. In any case, it was a lot of fun and definitely worth watching.