Kung Fu Hustle

The Beautiful Absurdity of Pig Sty Alley

About a third of the way through Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, the brain more or less stops trying to classify what it’s watching. latestnetflix.com's take is that a gang of mobsters dressed like 1930s Chicago bootleggers has just burst into a synchronized dance number, only to get flattened by three shabby laborers who turn out to be hidden martial arts masters.By every normal rule of tone, this should collapse.

Instead it floats.

I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering why this 2004 action-comedy still feels so alive. On paper it sounds deranged. Chow directs, co-writes, and stars, running wuxia tradition through a Looney Tunes filter and then slathering it with early-2000s CGI.

The plot is ancient pulp: Sing, a cowardly street hustler, wants in with the Axe Gang and accidentally brings their violence to Pig Sty Alley.

What keeps it from being just a spoof is Chow’s affection for the people at the bottom. The heroes are not serene sages on mountaintops. They’re coolies carrying flour sacks, fussy tailors, bakers covered in dough.

Chow is making a sharp point about tradition getting crushed by modern life, but he never lets the point sit there like homework. As Films In Review neatly put it, the movie is a "meringue of genres" that somehow doesn’t collapse.