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Sing (Stephen Chow) & his sidekick (Lam Chi Chung) want to be mean
gangswters of the almighty Axe Gang, so they try to extort money from the
tenants of the Pigsty apaprtment building ... but soon find themselves not half
as mean as the tenants of the appartment building ... & what's more, they
somehow drag the real Axe Gang into the conflict. The Axe Gang, who wanted to
go down heavily on the Pigsty tenants, soon find themselves no match against
the building's 3 martial arts masters (Hua Dong Zhi, Ling Chiu Chi, Yu Xing),
which seriously undermines their reputation as the city's toughest gang. So,
while Sing & sidekick still try to prove themselves mean but ultimately
only hurt themselves doing it, the Axe Gang's leader Brother Sum (Chan Kwok
Kuen) tries to do the only sensible thing to keep face ... hire the musicians,
2 blind master killers, who know some martial arts that enable them to create
deadly soundwaves wtih the help of their zither. Eventually, they manage to
kill all three masters, but prove to be no match against the martial arts of
the building's landlord (Yuen Wah) & landlady (Yuen Qiu) (who has perfected
the Lion Roar, meaning she can literally shout people down) ... the musician
leave in a panic. But in all the world, there is only one killer meaner than
the musicions, the Beast (Leung Siu Lung), but he is locked up in an asylum ...
so brother Sum remembers the incompetent Sing again & tells him to free
Beast - as he figures there's not much lost should Sing get kiled doing the job
... but against all expectatins, Sing succeeds - even if Beast seems to be in a
lamentable state. However, when he goes one-on-one (well, one-on-two) with the
landlord & the landlady, he proves to be their superior ... only when Sing
accidently interferes in their favour can the 2 escape, & after Sing is
beaten pretty much to a pulp by Beast, they even save his life. Soon, Sing's
grave injuries are healed, & it dawns on the landlord & landlady that
Sing must have the Chi powers of a great Kung Fu master, but his talent has
lain dormant until he was beaten up by Beast ... & now the ultimate fighter
inside Sing has hatched ... Soon it's the final duel between Beast &
Sing, where the 2 hit each other with pretty much everything but the kitchen
sink, but in the end, Sing flies to heaven (really), & returns to earth
using the Buddhist Fist (quite fitting, since he did see Buddha in heaven,
sitting on a cloud [really]). In the end, Beast cowers in front of Sing,
begging him to teach him ... From this synopsis, Kung Fu Hustle
might lsound like another martial arts comedy like so many others, which is
essentially true too, but first & foremost the film is a triumph of
imaginative use of special effects. & it's not even that the effects would
go to any new heights, technically speaking, it's just that they are used to
create new, unusual plot elements rather than show off the capacities of the
computers involved in creating them. & as these effects are used as
narrative elements in many sequences, they promptly make one forget the story's
minor inconsistencies or somewhat weak plotline. But be warned, if you are a
firm believer in the law of gravity, you might hate this movie.
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