Hacker Cinema
Kung Fu Hustle
功夫
2004 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Stephen Chow
It's the 1940s, and the notorious Axe Gang terrorizes Shanghai. Small-time criminals Sing and Bone hope to join, but they only manage to make lots of very dangerous enemies. Fortunately for them, kung fu masters and hidden strength can be found in unlikely places. Now they just have to take on the entire Axe Gang.
3 positive4 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
I think it makes sense that historically American film focused on narrative based dramas and slow burn horror. Think of classic Hollywood hits such as Citizen Kane and Psycho. This is even apparent in the recent success of Obsession, which really follows strongly in the trend of Hitchcock, magical realism, human drama, psychological horror.
Compare this with historically successful Honk Kong films: Kung Fu Hustle, Police Story, Ip Man. I mean there are examples of Hong Kong films that are slow burn human dramas, like Chungking Express and Eat Drink Man Woman, and successful American action films like Diehard, but I think its clear that Hollywood film didn't start out with action movies, and Hong Kong film didn't start out with slow burn dramas, but adopted these genres afterwards; you could even claim that successful Hong Kong films like the Bruce Lee films of the 70s fueled the American appetite for action in the 80s, which was the most prominent era for that genre in the US.
As a corollary to this, it becomes clear that the Korean and Japanese film making industries are not as culturally distinct from Hollywood as Honk Kong film making is. For Korean film, the reason is obvious: Koreatown in Los Angeles is right next to Hollywood, in some respects is a part of Hollywood, and there are deep ties now between the Korean and American film making industries for that reason, and Korean-Americans have an overly high degree of representation in American media, and Korean productions often come to America to shoot (think of the end of Squid Games: it's almost certainly the case that they shot in LA because a producer has a cousin or something that works in Hollywood).
Here's what I term my "flypaper" movies. If I happen to glance at the satellite TV guide and notice one of these coming up, there's a good change I'll be watching it.
Lawrence of Arabia The Maltese Falcon Most Hitchcock films Blade Runner The Man From Snowy River The Martian Monty Python & the Holy Grail The Princess Bride Serenity The Thin Man series The Thing Tombstone Young Frankenstein Monty Python and the Holy Grail Clerks and most Kevin Smith movies Baby Drive and most Edgar Wright movies Fanboys Spinal Tap Kung Fu Hustle Apollo 13
I generally agree with your premises other than Asian movies (especially Japanese) have always been considered amazing and were a major part of supporting arthouse cinema from the 60s on, it's Korean movies that have caught on. Kung Fu Hustle was literally the highest grossing foreign film in the US in 2005. Korean movies caught on not because of some change in Western aesthetics, but because they got better; Park Chan-Wook led the way.
I deeply disagree with your conclusion, however. Westerners have had plenty of opportunities to like (e.g.) Running Man since K-Dramas became popular. Plenty do. It's not a new exposure to something different. Any show with subtitles operates at a disadvantage; shows that have constant titles appearing and disappearing on the screen and also have subtitled speech are an extremely tough sell, especially since (e.g.) Running Man is dumb and it's target audience is going to be people looking for a laugh.
edit: you could get people used to the stupid noises and canned laughter, but all that stuff is usually used to punctuate the appearance and disappearance of on-screen titles.
> Nobody has ever said "landlady"
I have heard it in exactly one place, and that place is the movie Kung-fu Hustle.
Who is throwing handles?
I skip most of them. This is just my own personal preference but unless someone comes up with a new angle on this they are just boring and repetitive for me personally. The same goes for most fight scenes. I spent many decades watching martial arts films and now find most of the fight scenes to be repetitive. The only recent exceptions to this I can think of are the Bourne series, Kate and the first John Wick film. Prior to those, Kung Fu Hustle because of the mixed in comedy and thousands of movie references. Nothing else really comes to mind that I wouldn't skip.
Just a warning, but with Who Am I, my love of the movie largely comes from the rooftop fight sequence. It has been long enough that I only vaguely remember a few parts of the movie outside of that sequence. Thanks for the tip on The Foreigner, I will definitely check it out.
Not the same kind of movie (and not Jackie Chan), but Kung Fu Hustle is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. I also always thought that Bjarne Stroustrup kind of looks like The Beast in Kung Fu Hustle (it's the hair and glasses).
http://www.stroustrup.com/xBjarne2018.jpg.pagespeed.ic.hePTBHSpev.jpg
https://cinema1544.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/the-beast.jpg
I find it disappointing that the films on this list are overwhelmingly old. Sure, many of these were groundbreaking and influential in their time, but filmmaking has come such a long way since the days of Hitchcock, for example.
In his original list, "City of Gods" (which he didn't even spell correctly-- the english title is "City of God") is the only film made in the last 2 decades.
His updated list, which was supposed to be more inclusive to women, adds Apocalypto, District 9, Kung Fu Hustle, and Dirty Pretty Things, all of which are directed by men-- and he even removed "City of Gods", one of the few movies from the original list that had a female (co)director.
In fact, the entire list reads like a giant insult to all of Lee's contemporaries. Does he want every aspiring filmmaker to enter the business with antiquated sensibilities about cinematography?
He's coming across like the smug high-schooler who just discovered Led Zeppelin and declares that they're the greatest band of all time, and all modern music is crap.