★★★★
“Age is just a number.”
Well, this was a challenge. It showed up on YouTube as Gangster Granny, a reasonable translation of the Chinese title, 黑帮老太. But searching for either returned only a video game, or unrelated movies like Mafia Mamma. I ended up screen-capturing the end credits, pumping them through Google Translate, and plugging names into the IMDb to get info. Leading lady Yuen is an icon. She studied at the Peking Opera under the same master as Jackie Chan, and had a solid kung-fu movie career in the seventies, plus a small role in The Man with the Golden Gun. After a two-decade hiatus from acting, she played the role for which she’s best known in the West: the landlady in Kung Fu Hustle.
She wasn’t young there, and twenty years later, Yuen is in her mid-seventies. It’s clear there is doubling, CGI and other trickery used. But she’s still showing impressive grace, fluidity and skill for her age. I am not (yet!) in my mid-seventies, and consider getting up from my armchair without groaning to be an achievement. This begins with the middle-aged and pregnant Liang Jie in prison, showcasing her fighting talents before giving birth to a son, quickly whisked away for adoption. Thirty years later, she gets out and seeks her long-lost son. But Liang is still on the shit-list of mobster Chang Meng – Liang killed his father, which is why she was in jail. He sends blind assassin Ah Gui (Ng) to pretend to be the son, so he can kill Liang.
Naturally, this proves not as easy as he thinks, despite a cunning use of walnut shells to overcome his visual impairment. Ah Gui is an orphan himself, so gradually – and probably inevitably! – the kindness of Liang begins to win him over. Chang gets fed up waiting for his minion to do the job, so sends the backup squad, led by Liya (Yiu, recently seen here starring in The Forbidden City). Ah Gui needs to decide on which side he’s going to be. As if that weren’t enough, the script also throws in an undercover cop and a terminal ailment. Yeah, it is fair to criticize writing which seems to adopt an “Everything including the kitchen-sink” approach.
That said, I still found this enormous fun. When kung-fu films bring humour into the mix, it doesn’t often work – Hustle, and the other work of Stephen Chow, is a rare exception. Often, it goes for childish comedic mugging in indigestible lumps, but this does a much better job than most of striking a balance. There were moments where I genuinely laughed out loud. I found the dramatic elements work well too, staying just this side of melodramatic pathos. But let’s not kid ourselves. We’re here for the action, and this is above-average, climaxing in a pool-side fight involving everyone. And fire, because why not? This feels like an old-school throwback to HK action-comedy, and as such, was a pleasant surprise.
Dir: Suiqiang Huo
Star: Qiu Yuen, Philip Ng, Jiahe Ji, Laxi Yiu