The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison urges you to make haste to KUNG FU SOCCER (Stephen Chow, China, 2026)

 

REVENGE OF THE CHINESE MOVIE

Currently in Sydney’s Event Centre and probably other venues that run Chinese movies here, we are getting Stephen Chow Chin-chi’s  Gong fu nv zu/Kung Fu Soccer, his first film in seven years.

Stephen Chow had been one of the greats of Hong Kong film and his 2001 Siu Lam juk kau/ Shaolin Soccer was his major work. What he had done since had been over shadowed by that, so the new film offered hopes of a return to form and fears of a lazy cash-in. What we get is neither.

The earlier movie pivoted on the idea that Shaolin disciples had seen respect for their traditions fade away in the contemporary world, so Stephen retrieves a group of forgotten Shaolin masters from the obscurity of their slum community to form a champion soccer team, using their super powers to dominate the game. It was a great, ridiculous concept beautifully realised. The question is, can it stand another go-round?

The new Kung Fu Soccer has two initial surprises. Here, rather than starring, now sixty-year-old director-producer-writer Chow only momentarily figures, a couple of gag appearances. Second, the picture quality is exceptional. In China they are playing it at IMAX and it’s the number two hit of the year.

 This time the idea has been retreaded for a female soccer team (oh, oh!) in the Asian Women's Champions League but trendy ideology proves minimal. In the opening stages, the plot centers on Zhang Xiaofei, the captain of China’s low status Emei team and Dilraba Dilmurat  as Yu Long, their star striker. Their friendship is failing. Everyone tells the players that, now in their thirties, they are too old for championship matches. They however maintain that it takes decades to acquire their skills. The rookies are not being given a chance and quit and Zhang Xiaofei falls out with her dream-boat love interest, who switches his support to the rival team. All this pretty tame. However the preposterous effects work is already good for a giggle - the kick which sends the ball into the path of an airliner flying over the field. That and the black and white flashbacks provide reminders of Shaolin Soccer - which outclasses this one.

Developments like the supervision of mahjong-playing Grand Master Carina Lau (Infernal Affairs - at last a familiar face) are equally uninvolving. However, a few interesting subplots emerge - the conflict of the earnest captain determined to win and the new recruit who plays for the fun of the game. More importantly, the effects work becomes increasingly flamboyant. The film even develops some suspense as the ball repeatedly trembles on the painted goal line in front of the net. All this meshes with the imposing Olympic Stadium nicely.

Stephen Chow has had a quarter century to refine the Shaolin Soccer concept and in that time Chinese laboratory work has had a chance to do catch-up. We get the magical illusion of a shower of soccer balls defeated by sending in the blind goal keeper, the athletes in the impossible human array pyramids from the wu xia films or the opposing team, who also have superpowers, transforming into a savage cheetah, the big cat racing through the players without attracting the referee’s red card, all both nicely nostalgic and cheerworthy elements for the film’s matches. They represent a triple threat - fun plot developments, an impressive display of film technique and frequently striking imagery that can hold its own with Hollywood’s current strip-cartoon hero movies. The effects make the film well worth the seat price, even if they take a while to obscure the clunky plot.

It’s not all good news however. Kung Fu Soccer has a disturbingly brutal streak. The injuries to the comics and mind games and physical violence the lead couple visit on one another are unsettling to an outside audience and there’s an element of racism in the depiction of the unappealing types who make up the opposing teams. This is unfamiliar in Stephen Chow’s work and, without knowing its intention, it is disturbing. The film is not the great fun outing his earlier work offered. That can only be disappointing.

There was a light opening night attendance. Chow’s admirers are advised to move fast. There is no guarantee it will get past Wednesday.

The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison tracks down the Chinese hit of the year - TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS: WALLED IN (Soi Cheang, China, 2024)

Director Soi Cheang’s new Manga adaptation Jiu Long cheng zhai · Wei cheng / Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is currently the big-earning Asian block buster. In the early scenes, it raises hopes of a revival of the great Hong Kong action movies. However, this one settles into being long, ultraviolent and uninvolving. There’s also the uncomfortable feeling that it is a piece of Beijing propaganda that wants to remind us how lawless and ugly Hong Kong was before Mainland authority imposed proper control.

Despite a contemporary dim and busy look – like Les Trois Mousquetaires – as the film runs on we recognise the conventions and devices of the Kung Fu Cinema. The fight in the doubled deck bus could have been choreographed by Jackie Chan. The film even fronts the heavy-weight presence of Sammo Hung, once the sharpest tool in the Asian Cinema drawer. He dominates every scene in which his Mr. Big Vice Tsar appears and at seventy even manages a couple of moves for the fight scenes mainly left to doubles and the agile young actors who are more familiar to the people watching these regularly than they are to me. There are no significant female characters, though the billing manages to front a couple of bit players they can advertise to escape charges of excessive macho. The little girl comic, who looked like she was going to be an element, vanishes.

Plot has illegal arrival (one cut of a ship’s deck in a storm) Louis Koo providing the entertainment in a decadent (of course) luxury night spot as a no holds barred fighter who takes down an opponent for the delight of customers. When he goes for his pay-off, bleeding from being dragged round the broken glass on the floor, Sammo pockets the money and says he will use it to get the fake I.D. Koo is saving for. What he subsequently provides is so shoddy that the kid punches his way out of the dope warehouse grabbing a bag of what proves to be Blow instead of cash.

Louis Koo, Sammo Hung

He is pursued into the Walled City of Kowloon, which is as important as any of the characters and the film’s strongest element, with people living among its smashed concrete floors, scarred walls and tangle of air conditioners and electrical cables. Low flying air liners nearly touch the roofs. We’ve seen this in the films of Tsui Hark but it was never as grubby and menacing as this.

The residents give the wounded fugitive help but his attempts to push the drugs confront him with the ground level barber who is (of course) a martial arts champion, and easily takes him down. Some doctoring with a masked man in a store of porno VHS tapes, which are new to Koo, and he’s put to work with the barber’s helpers, whom he joins in crooked mahjong games. They become his new family.

This sanctuary is of course imperilled by excessive plot development as much as historical events. Criminal magnate heavies plan on buying out the Walled City for token payments and reselling the land to the developers, who will cover the site with new high rises. Meanwhile, a generational revenge plot surfaces and ambitious lieutenants exert control. The menacing silhouettes blocking the entrance to alleyways are OK but we are over the top with the hysterical villain having “Spiritual Power” that makes him invulnerable to edged weapons and can only be taken down in the tradition of King Hu’s costume actioners by the combined martial arts skills of the battered gang members. Also, as in the samurai adventures, guns make a belated entrance. I was watching the clock well before this.

I rate this one as an opportunity missed.

Reviving Memories of Kim Maree Penn - Mike Retter remembers an Australian actor who conquered Hong Kong

Kim Maree Penn was the Sharon Stone of martial arts films. The most beautiful gweilo to ever work in the Hong Kong film industry. 

The peak of her career would be the classic In The Line Of Duty 5: Middleman ( In The Line Of Duty V: Middleman), with a fantastic end fight against Cynthia Khan (hand to hand, sword fighting). Kim Maree Penn is actually a security expert, bodyguard and martial arts instructor in real life. 

She was able to enjoy one of Hong Kong cinema's peak eras. Pre-CGI, Kim Maree Penn employed lots of physicality and stunt-work in her often villainous roles.

CLICK HERE FOR MIKE RETTER'S YOUTUBE MASHUP OF HER GREATEST HITS