Kung Fu Hustle

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Kung Fu Hustle's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Kung Fu Hustle completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 18 August 05.

Overall comments and recommendations

Kung Fu Hustle is a very funny, Kung Fu action comedy/satire. The film contains frequent cartoon style slapstick violence, domestic violence, frequent brutal violence, gruesome violent images including dismemberment, some horror images, drug use and references and infrequent mild and coarse language. The film is targeted at both older adolescents and adults. Many will find the slapstick humour and satire in the film very funny; however, those who find violence and gruesome images disturbing are strongly cautioned, and should stay away regardless of the laughs this film is capable of producing.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Kung Fu Hustle contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Set in the 1940s in the streets of Shanghai, the opening scenes of Kung Fu Hustle show a bloodbath between two rival crime-gangs, the Crocodile Gang and the Axe Gang. The Axe Gang slaughters the Crocodile Gang with the leader of the Axe Gang, Brother Sum (Chan Kwok-kwan) brutally hacking to death the leader of the Crocodile Gang.

Meanwhile in Pigsty Alley, a poorer quarter of the city, an apartment block houses a group of colourful characters, including, unbeknownst to the locals, five retired Kung Fu legends: Landlady (Yuen Qiu), a ruthless walking nightmare who stomps around the apartment’s courtyard in a housecoat with curlers in her hair and a cigarette superglued to the side of her mouth; Landlord (Yuen Wah), a wannabe womaniser who spends most of his time fending off his wife’s (Landlady) brutal attacks; Donut (Dong Zhi Hua), a middle-aged noodle maker; Tailor (Chiu Chi Ling), a tailor who exhibits very camp characteristics running around in see through shorts and red underpants, and Coolie (Xing Yu), a local labourer capable of carrying five sacks of grain on his back without working up a sweat. Into Pigsty Alley walks Sing (Steven Chow/producer/director/star) and his overweight sidekick named Sidekick (Lam Tze-chung), a couple of would be gangsters who create uproar when they attempt to extort money from the local barber.

The Axe Gang intervene and battles ensue between the various Kung Fu masters. The greatest Kung Fu master of all time, The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), is added to the mix when he is released from the local asylum for the insane. The film also contains a minor romantic subplot involving Sing and a mute street seller named Fong (Huang Shengyi).

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Kung Fu Hustle contains frequent strong stylised brutal violence throughout as well as black and white still images of gruesome multiple axe murders. Violent scenes include:

• the leader of the Crocodile Gang spits on the police chief and then throws hot coals over his head
  
• an axe is hurled across a street severing the lower leg of the leader of the Crocodile Gang
  
• Brother Sum brutally chops up the man’s body with an axe. The image of Sum chopping the body was filmed from the back of Sum, there where no actual images of the axe severing the body, the action was implied. However, when Sum finished with the axe he turned around to show an image of his face splattered with blood.
  
• Sum shoots a woman in the back at close range with a shotgun. The force of the blast tears her dress in two and propels her body across the street.
  
• the Landlady brutally punches her husband (Landlord) in the face and head, knocking him to the ground, and then throws his body out of a second storey window. She then throws a pot plant out of the window striking Landlord on the head. (intended for comic effect)
  
• a member of the Axe Gang pours a petrol-like substance over a mother and her young son with Brother Sum standing over the pair with a lit lighter threatening to set them on fire.
  
• Sing is stabbed repeatedly in the shoulder with throwing knifes, ending the scene with four knifes sticking out of his right shoulder (presented in a highly comical manner)
  
• a group of young boys aged about thirteen bully a young girl (about ten years of age) holding her down pulling her hair and making her cry
  
• the same boys beat up on a young Sing (aged about ten) hitting him in the head, knocking him to the ground and then urinating on him.
  
• mystical swords decapitate Coolie. Explicit images of the decapitation are not shown, but images of the head rolling along the ground and the body falling to the ground are shown.
  
• Tailor and Donut are cut and slashed by mystical swords that leave bloodied wounds.
  
• Landlady is repeatedly punched and kicked in the stomach by The Beast, there is blood on her head and face and coming out of her mouth.
  
• The Beast stabs both Landlady and landlord in the stomach with a dagger-like weapon
  
• Beast pounds Sing’s head and face into the pavement until Sing’s head is a squashed pulp, although explicit images are not shown
  
• The Beast kills Sum by punching him in the head with enough force that his head is twisted around several times ending with his neck looking like a corkscrew.
  
• numerous Kung Fu style fights, involving all manner of punches and kicks to every part of the body.

For the most part, and with the exception of Sing at the end of the film, the heroes enacting the violence are satirised rather than glamorised. The film continuously presents violent acts in a comical, cartoonish, or slapstick context.

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Many scenes, including those listed above, contain bloodthirsty and gruesome images that could seriously disturb children under the age of eight. In addition, the following scenes could disturb children in this age group:

• images of corpse-like samurai warrior wraiths, resembling the army of the dead from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
  
• Sing is bitten on the lips by poisonous snakes, and as a result later undergoes a transformation
  
• a door opens to release a room full of blood that comes pouring out and rushing along a corridor.
  
• The Beast transforms into a bullfrog

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

All of the above mentioned scenes containing violence could also disturb children between the ages of eight and thirteen years.

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Some children over the age of thirteen will be more able to cope with the film’s comical violence. However they could still be scared or disturbed by the more gruesome violent images presented in the film.

Sexual references

The film contains one mild sexual reference. The Landlord comments to a young woman, who has a somewhat prostitute-like appearance, that she should come over so that he can examine her. The inference has a sexual connotation.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some partial nudity, including:

• several scenes showing the top half of a younger man’s bottom. His pants were always falling halfway down his bottom.
  
• several images of bare chested men with well-developed muscles
  
• the boss of the Crocodile Gang grabs a woman on the bottom

Use of substances

There is mild use of substances, including:

• The Landlord drinks a clear spirit from a bottle while he is having his lunch. He gives the appearance of being happily intoxicated laughing, joking slurring his words a little and staggering somewhat.
  
• In a couple of scenes Sum drinks from a hip flask. He does not show any signs of being intoxicated, but always appears somewhat agitated before he drinks from the flask.
  
• Landlady constantly has a cigarette hanging from the side of her mouth as though it is a permanent fixture; and even manages to kiss Landlord without removing the cigarette.
  
• Sum smokes cigarettes or cigars in several scenes.
  
• Sum smokes opium from a large water pipe. The scene also contains images of the instruments used to prepare the opium. In the same scene a package is shown to Sum with reference being made to the opium inside being dried out.

Coarse language

The film contains some coarse language, often used in a comical context, including:

• fucking (one instance)
  
• arsehole
  
• bitch
  
• shut the hell up
  
• shit

The movie's message

The film’s main intent is to satirise as much as possible a variety of beliefs, a range of box office hit films from the last twenty years and Kung Fu films in general.

Parents may wish to discuss the cartoon nature of the violence presented throughout the film and how violence presented in this way differs from real world violence. Parents may wish to discuss the dangers that real world violence can present to adolescent males and the actual long term consequences associated with it.