| Stephen
Chow's follow-up to SHAOLIN SOCCER ups the over-the-top action
quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set
in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be
bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a
war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble
inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow who wrote, produced, and
directed doesn't step in as the star here for quite a while,
letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a
landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten
buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through
walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabres from lyre strings,
and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named 'the Beast'
(Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers. Buoyed by
SOCCER's box office success, HUSTLE uses bigger production
values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts
(imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in THE MATRIX). It's full
of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti
westerns and '70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino's KILL
BILL (fight choreographer Yuen Wo Ping worked on both films).
It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W.
Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and
Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong's inspired score matches each
cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera
circles and swoops around the sprawling sets. This is a real
treat, more than a great action film or comedy, it's a great
film period, and one that set box office records in the East.
All Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 - 21 Jun 2006
I've shown this movie to all my friends, and
none of them are fans of Kung Fu or foreign films. But after
this ... well, most of them have gone and bought their own
copy and even bought it for their friends.
Why the fuss? It's fun, it's more than a bit silly, and very
very witty, with scenes so funny it leaves you in tears. (I
defy anyone not to watch the knife throwing and snakes scene
and not go into hysterics). This movie is for everyone; action,
special effects, friendships and finding your place, (and
chi,) in the world. I can't wait until Stephen Chow's next
movie.
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