Kung Fu Hustle

Real styles behind the comedy

Stephen Chow directs, co-writes and plays Sing. Under the cartoon humour, each fighter in Pigsty Alley uses a recognisable style. Coolie the porter throws the kicks of tan tui, the Tam school's "twelve kicks". The tailor strikes with iron rings on his forearms, a hallmark of Hung Ga: he is played by Chiu Chi-ling, a Hung Ga master in real life. Donut wields the Eight Trigram staff. The landlord is a tai chi stylist, his wife unleashes the Lion's Roar, and the Beast uses Toad style. A kung fu practitioner will recognise the stances, the footwork and the names of the techniques.

A cast from Peking opera and the 1970s

Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu, the landlord couple, trained as children in Peking opera, at the same school as Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. Leung Siu-lung, the Beast, was a kung fu star of the 1970s. That gives the fights a precision untrained actors could not match.

Two top choreographers

Sammo Hung started on the fight choreography and left after about two months. Yuen Woo-ping, choreographer of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, replaced him. Filming ran in Shanghai from June to November 2003, and fight scenes took up about two thirds of the shoot. Wires and CGI push the techniques into cartoon territory, but the core combinations are those of real fighters.

Reception

Released in Hong Kong on 23 December 2004, it remained the city's highest-grossing film until 2011, with HK$61.27 million. It took about 101 million dollars worldwide on a 20 million budget and was the highest-grossing foreign-language film in North America in 2005. It won six Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Action Choreography, and five Golden Horse Awards, including Best Director. It holds a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

For kung fu fans it is a tribute to Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films, packed with nods to the great schools.