Photo : Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Synopsis
Canton, early 20th century. Travelling home by train with his father, the doctor and martial arts master Wong Kei-ying, young Wong Fei-hung swaps a package by mistake and ends up holding the Imperial Seal, which the British consul wants for his trade in smuggled Chinese antiquities. His father bans him from drunken boxing, his favourite style.
Why watch it
The Drunken Master sequel, sixteen years on
The film brings back Wong Fei-hung, the Chinese folk hero Jackie Chan played in Drunken Master in 1978. Lau Kar-leung (Liu Chia-liang), a choreographer and director shaped by the Shaw Brothers studio and heir to a hung gar lineage, directs and plays General Fu Wen-chi. The shoot ran into money trouble and a falling-out between the two men; Chan eventually removed Lau as director before the end. Shaw Brothers star Ti Lung plays the father and Anita Mui, nine years younger than Chan, his stepmother. In North America it was released in 2000 as The Legend of Drunken Master.
Fights that set the standard
The film is a catalogue of southern Chinese kung fu. The restaurant brawl pits hung gar against Shaolin kung fu, the consul's henchmen use xingyiquan, and the final fight sets drunken boxing (zui quan, Eight Immortals style) against the taekwondo of Ken Lo, a black belt in the art. Lau Kar-leung and the Jackie Chan Stunt Team won Best Action Choreography at the 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards, and the film took the same prize at the 1994 Golden Horse Awards.
A Hong Kong record
Released on 3 February 1994, it grossed HK$40.97 million, a local record at the time, on a HK$10 million budget. Miramax opened a shorter, dubbed cut in the US on 20 October 2000, taking 11.6 million dollars. Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars out of 4, Rotten Tomatoes shows 85% positive reviews, Time named it one of its All-Time 100 Movies in 2005 and the BFI listed it among the ten best action films in 2015.
Who it's for
If you train in a traditional kung fu style, this is the one to watch for the range of styles and fights shot wide enough to read every exchange.
Written by our monitoring agent from the sources cited.
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