PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
I'm not the kind of person that tries to push films that I enjoy on people who don't have any interest in that particular cinematic genre. Even though I loved it, I won't insist that a friend who hates tedious science fiction films see 2001. If you're a homophobe who hates foreign cinema, I'm not going to needle you until you see Water Drops on Burning Rocks.
The Legend of Drunken Master is a rare exception to my rule. Everybody should see this film, even if you hate martial arts pictures. Master is often referred to as the Citizen Kane of its genre, and its intoxicating fight sequences are second to none – including The Matrix and the upcoming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Jackie Chan (Shanghai Noon) stars as Wong Fei-hong, the rebellious son of an important doctor during some nameless Chinese period. As the film opens, Fei-hong accidentally switches a package with somebody else on a crowded train. Instead of coming home with ginseng root for one of his father's patients, he ends up with an ancient jade seal (a macguffin?). The missing ginseng root becomes the source for many of the film's laughs, while the seal lands Fei-hong and his whole family in a world of trouble.
It turns out that the seal was supposed to be delivered to a devious group of baddies who are helping a moustache-twirling Brit steal ancient Chinese artifacts (read: cultural robbery). Fei-hong becomes wrapped up in their Machiavellian plot and finds himself on the receiving end of a very large beating.
But Fei-hong is no slouch when it comes to fighting. He embraces a style of combat called `drunken boxing,' in which you stumble around like you've just done a dozen shots of Jager and then, theoretically, beat the snot out of your enemies. In Master, drunken boxing works better when you've actually consumed a bunch of alcohol. Supposedly, this style makes the body more relaxed and flexible, while it also increases the body's pain threshold. Unfortunately, his father (Lung Ti, A Better Tomorrow) forbids both fighting and drinking, and Fei-hong finds himself cast out after one particular binge of drunken battle.
Chan does a great job of pounding down alcohol like a Conehead and then shouting out the names of each of his drunken moves as he performs them. The physical role is an obvious nod to Chan's hero, Buster Keaton. Like his other films, Chan performs all of his own stunts, including a couple of amazing fight sequences in very tight quarters (under a train and under a table). One scene has him fending off an entire army of ax-wielding henchmen, and the twenty-minute finale (which took four months to film) is an incredible blend of Chan's unmatched martial arts skills and fearless stunt work.
Master was released in Asia in 1994, and it has, unfortunately, been dubbed into English for its American release. Originally titled Drunken Master 2, the film is actually a sequel to one of Chan's earlier films released in 1979. The character of Fei-hong is somewhat of a Paul Bunyan-like legend in China, and the character has been portrayed in a five film series called Once Upon a Time in China (Jet Li played the role in the fourth film).
Another highlight is the performance of Anita Mui (Rumble in the Bronx), who plays Fei-hong's hysterical stepmother (Chan appears to be older than both actors portraying his parents). Master is the fourth release this month to have the main character(s) sing a song at some point during the narrative (following Ladies Man, Remember the Titans and Dancer in the Dark).
Master was directed by Chia-Liang Liu, who won the prestigious trophy for Best Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards. The film was written by Kai-Chi Yun (A Chinese Ghost Story) and first-timer King-Sang Tseng. Like most of Chan's films, the closing credits contain outtakes of stunts gone bad, which is a reminder of how amazing and effortless they appear in the film.
1:42 - R for violence and lots of binge drinking
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