One of the Year's Best

curtis-8

This movie has everything--comedy, drama, pathos, incredible action, slapstick, great acting, a great story, wildly inventive absurdity, actual thematic threads (a long gone element in US films), moments of sheer poetry, and genuine heart. In true HK style, it has a bit of everything. Not only was it a much, much better martial arts film than either the more respected "Hero" or "House of Flying Daggers," it was a much better film, period. In fact, "Kung Fu Hustle" was one of the best movies of any kind I've seen this year.

It's great that Columbia Pictures/Sony Classics gave this movie a US release with only minor cuts (which, now that I've seen the uncut HK version, should have been left in). But it is obvious that they had no idea how to market it, though they spent a lot of money trying. They pushed it only for its comedic elements, positioning it in the media as a wacky spoof of Kung Fu movies, like "Blazing Saddles" was for westerns--which it is not!

But I don't really blame Columbia for Kung Fu Hustles weak stateside box office--I blame those morons at Miramax! Yeah, you heard me you two! I think that this great movie would have found a much bigger audience if Miramax, the US distributor of Chow's previous film, "Shaolin Soccer," hadn't so utterly botched that film's US release, showing it heavily cut in only a couple of theatres before dumping it unceremoniously onto video. While not all Americans are familiar with the conventions of the HK Kung Fu flicks of the Seventies (which admittedly does help when viewing Kung Fu Hustle) EVERYONE in the US knows soccer. I think Soccer could have been a US smash along the lines of Crouching Tiger, if handled properly.

In a perfect world, the more easily digestible "Shaolin Soccer" would have been Chow's huge US hit, paving the way in the American public imagination for this far superior follow up. If Chow had become the US star he should have a couple of years ago, Americans would have lined up for Hustle even if they had never seen a kung fu movie in their lives. But it was not to be. People didn't know who Chow was and couldn't tell what kind of film was being marketed; they went into the theatres expecting to see a dumbass gross out parody and left disappointed.

It's just not right that more folks in the US haven't seen this great film. Let's hope for a second life in the USA from good DVD sales.

ps--and by the way, I don't think Kung Fu Hustle is really doing parodies of either The Matrix or Reservoir Dogs as is way too often mentioned in reviews. Both of those flicks borrowed HEAVILY from previous Hong Kong movies so I think it much more likely that Chow was referencing the original Hong Kong movies, with which he and other Asians would be most familiar, not the American imitators.

score 10/10

curtis-8 19 May 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1084160/