The cast: Stephen Chow
The director: Stephen Chow
The storyline: Stephen Chow. Ask him, he wrote it.
The bottomline: Hilarious!
What can you expect from a Chinese film made in Hong Kong and dubbed with Indian artistes?
Not much.
Which is exactly why one would find Kung Fu Hustle to exceed your expectations. It is one madcap entertainer, completely irreverent with special effects to put ‘The Matrix’ to shame and kung fu action that might give Steve Oedekerk a complex. Oedekerk who? The genious behind the kung-fu spoof ‘Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.”
But then ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ is not entirely a spoof like ‘Kung Pow’ though it would fall in the same genre.
Actually, it is a difficult task to slot ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ into any specific genre. It is an action movie with stunts comparable with the best in the martial arts genre. It is a special effects movie with outstretches the best in imagination. It is a martial arts spoof that does not stop at anything. It is visual poetry in motion comparable to John Woo’s style of filmmaking. And at the same time, it is where MAD magazine comicbook humour meets MTV-spoof show and where Tom and Jerry meet Jackie Chan.
There is not too much of a storyline either. A thoroughly incompetent wannabe gangster (Chow) and his friend try to con a low-class neighbourhood with no luck, only to find themselves at the receiving end of some action from the unlikeliest of heroes – a fat landlady and her wastrel of a husband.
The dreaded Axe gang hires the best assassins in the business to fight the duo as Chow finds his way into the gang, only to be beaten to pulp by the demented Beast, the best kung-fu fighter ever, a geeky looking old man.
The duo soons finds out that Chow is the ‘Chosen one’ and the final confrontation fight between the Beast and Chow takes kung-fu farce to new heights, literally!
However silly in thought and idea, the spectacular and gutsy execution makes you forget the inanity instantly, such is the charm of this pot pourri of Asian pop culture. Evil stylised villains, the oppressed underdogs fighting back, innocent childhood sweetheart of the hero are all ingredients Asian cinema is so familiar with. Now watch these familiar characters do things you have never seen before.
The background score builds up the tempo to the action sequences and is bound to have your tapping your feet to the rhythm.
The most bizarre, whacky, unpredictable piece of madcap entertainment you will find in one screen and under one roof, only bettered by the Tamil version.
Yes, the Tamil dubbed version ‘Mirattal Adi’ seems to match the sensibility of the visuals more appropriately than the poorly dubbed English version. So for unlimited entertainment, catch the action in Tamil.
Archive For May 26th, 2005
Review: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith!
Journey to the dark side
The cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Samuel LJackson, Ian McDiarmid, Christopher Lee and Frank Oz (voice of Yoda)
The director: George Lucas
The storyline: How Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader.
The bottomline: Watch you must, expect you must not.
This has to be the darkest of the lot.
Fine, if you consider that young fans of the originals have aged since the first Star Wars film released in 1977. And the present crop of young fans are anyway used to finding violence and killing in films.
‘Revenge of the Sith’ is very grown-up compared to the other films in the series. And the most serious one. There aren’t too many funny lines or feel good moments. But that again is understandable considering that George Lucas just wanted this episode to show how a good man becomes bad.
How the irresistibly cute child from ‘Episode 1:The Phantom Menace’ Anakin Skywalker becomes the black-metal masked evil Darth Vader, the villain in the original series (which have now become Episodes 4,5 and 6).
Given that the function of the middle of any story is to put the central characters into a crisis and push them to the lowest point of their graph, there was very little scope for comic interludes. Hence the beeping droid R2D2 is just at its efficient best, the gold-plated C3PO does not get too much screen time, the usually eccentric Yoda we see in the originals is all serious and the goofy Jar Jar Binks, introduced in Episode 1 to bring comic relief is done away with.
Drama dominates ‘Revenge of the Sith’ as Lucas fleshes out the politics that sets the stage for the transformation of Anakin (HaydenChristensen), who now finds his loyalties split between the Jedi Council and the Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who he had befriended in the prequel.
After having set-up Anakin’s ability to foresee death (remember the premonition he had in Episode 2 about his established when little Anakin meets the Jedi council for the first time in Episode 1 when Yoda tells him: “Fear is the path to the darkside. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”), the master story-teller skillfully ties it all up, with Anakin now getting a premonition of Padme’s (Natalie Portman) death.
Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu has just about managed a slightly bigger role this time and Ewan McGregor gets the meaty chunk of the saberlight fights. It is to the director’s credit that the mind-blowing visual effects (the saberlight fight in the climax between Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin/Darth Vader is the highlight of the film and the battle scenes are out of this world), in spite of being the best in the series, in no way distract you from the story you already know.
And that, is the beauty of the third prequel. It meticulously fills in the blanks between the first two prequels and the three originals, unfolding an almost Shakespearean transformation of Anakin.
Star Wars fans will love it, for this has pretty much everything else you liked about the series. Lucas continues his “one cliffhanger after another” formula to have you at the edge of our seat, with the “I have a bad feeling about this” line (this time Obi Wan Kenobi says it) signaling off the start of yet another adventure, yet another saberlight fight, yet another losing the saberlight stunt, yet another narrow escape, and many ‘May the Force be with you’ greetings thrown in, at regular intervals.
As Yoda would say about ‘Revenge of the Sith’: “Expect too much, you must not. Enjoy, you will then.
* * *
That was the story that reached the desk. What appeared was this.
Anyway, there’s more I wanted to blog about Star Wars. So here I go:
I’m sure many would agree that the charm of the originals is missing in the prequels. There was a certain simplicity about the special effects, which seemed pretty adequate then! The onscreen charisma of Harrison Ford playing Han Solo salvaged even the cheesiest of lines and the chemistry and the and seemingly intriguing triangle between Luke, Han and Leiah kept you guessing and hooked to the series.
But having said that, there is a certain balance Lucas has managed to strike between the prequels and originals. If Episode 6: Return of the Jedi uses a silly kid-savvy ploy like those cute teddy-bear-like creatures helping to win the battle, Episode 1: Phantom Menace uses another silly kid-savvy ploy of lil Anakin almost single-handedly flying a spaceship he has never ever flown before and rescue the Jedis. Episodes 2 and 5 are about Luke and Anakin undergoing Jedi training. Episodes 3 and 4 have confrontations between Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi.
There is so much of symmetry and balance, that at least some of it probably is intentional. I remember Lucas used that word: ‘symmetry’ in the Director’s commentary of Episode 2, while explaining how he wanted to choreograph stunt sequences involving Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin with a certain sense of balance.
If you were to credit the prequels for something, it has to be for it’s strong political content. It’s not just makes the series contemporary but is also reflective of modern day society. You can see more signs of consumerism (neon signs, nightclubs and fastfood), the increasing nexus between of politicians, their armies and technology and the suggestion of media culture (when Obi Wan Kenobi tells Anakin that he must take credit for saving the day, you almost see Anakin addressing a press conference). So quite ironically, while the prequels are representative of contemporary society, the originals which had ingredients of the pop-culture of the seventies is actually shown as the future: The era of Next Generation Skywalker!
Which is why if you haven’t seen Star Wars yet, do NOT watch it from Episodes 1 to 6! It will be really unfair to the originals. This story is best told in the order it has been made: 4,5,6,1,2,3!
Going into hiding!
Tomorrow has to be THE most embarassing day of my career.
Ok, second most, the first was when I, quite dim-wittedly, called Shravanabelagola a Buddhist shrine in one of my travel features and my colleague feared that we would have an army of naked Jains outside the office protesting. By the mercy of Mahavira, that did not happen and I was glad I just escaped with a 150 postcards calling me names!
That day, I truly deserved to be kicked.
But not tomorrow, when I’m gonna be given the credit for a creative masterpiece of a blooper which could make Pakistani actress Meera give me the ‘Nazar’ that could kill, if she were in this part of the world reading the paper.
What I wrote:
… ‘Nazar’ is just the movie for activists who wake up every morning and wonder: ‘What film should we ban next?”
The revelation of the motive for the serial killer in the end is quite ban-worthy. The serial-killer Divya (Meera) has visions of throughout the film, just wants to eliminate “bar girls who spread AIDS.”
No, we won’t give away the killer.
Here’s what is appearing in Friday Review after the clever subeditor changed it to:
Divya (Meera) has visions and just wants to eliminate “bar girls who spread AIDS.”
I plead guilty of leaving a comma out. But THIS??
Well, I need to go into hiding. NOW!!
P.S: Tomorrow, I will post the unedited reviews of Star Wars, Nazar and Kung Fu Hustle. Just for you guys to compare with what comes out finally on print!
MADRAS INK. 