Kung Fu League

功夫联盟

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 101 mins.

Director: Liu Zhenwei 刘镇伟 [Jeff Lau].

Rating: 7/10.

Time-travelling martial-arts spoof is tightly constructed, well cast, and done with love and care.

STORY

Zhejiang province, southern China, Jul 2018. Having finished his first comic book, Kung Fu Association 功夫联盟, Fei Yingxiong (Shu Yaxin), a young cartoonist at TRA Comic Art Workshop, writes a love letter to his dream girl, colleague Bao’er (Maidina). Though friends since university days, he has never plucked up the courage to date her, and she is now being wooed by her cousin, Zhang Peng (Zhang Ziwen), who owns TRA. After being sacked following a misunderstanding, Fei Yingxiong exhorts his comicbook heroes to help him out. Meanwhile, back in the Qing dynasty, martial-arts master Huang Feihong (Zhao Wenzhuo) is battling some opponents in a lion dance while his fiancee, Thirteenth Aunt (Zhang Yao), is looking for an excuse not to marry him, especially as she now has a mysterious second suitor. That night Huang Feihong dreams of Fei Yingxiong pleading for his help, and next day wakes up to find his house is part of a film set at Hengdian World Studios, where an anti-Japanese resistance drama is being shot. He meets Chen Zhen (Chen Guokun), his master Huo Yuanjia (An Zhijie), as well as Ye Wen (Du Yuhang), all of whom have also time-travelled. After going into the city and eating at a junk-food restaurant, they bump into Bao’er who charitably gives them some money; when that is stolen, they meet and beat a gang of thieves led by Shi Gandang (He Yunwei), who ends up helping them trace Fei Yingxiong. They finally meet him at the site of the forthcoming World Martial Arts Championships, staged by Zhang Peng and with a purse of RMB30 million. Fei Yingxiong tells the masters that he’ll only make a wish to send them back to their time if they teach him martial arts so he can win the money and prove himself worthy of Bao’er.

REVIEW

Despite two box-office flops in 2017 – Soccer Killer 仙求大战 and You’d Better Run 你往哪里跑 – veteran Hong Kong spoofter Liu Zhenwei 刘镇伟 [Jeff Lau] shows a surprising lack of fatigue with Kung Fu League 功夫联盟, a time-travelling martial-arts comedy in which four past masters end up in 21st-century China and help a geeky cartoonist win his dream girl. Though the script is credited to a certain Huang Jianhong 黄剑虹, it shows all of Liu’s trademark humour and obsessions and is his best film since the unjustly neglected black comedy Lock Me Up Tie Him Down 完美假妻168 (2014). However, it still flopped on release, grabbing a puny RMB18 million. The indefatigable Liu, 66, already has two more movies set for 2019: one, Ne Zha 大闹东海 (shot back in 2016), is in the fantasy martial-arts genre that’s provided his one sizeable hit in recent years, A Chinese Odyssey: Part Three 大话西游3 (2016, RMB360 million); the other, Assassins and the Missing Gold 十吨刺客, is a Republican Era action romp.

Liu’s best parodies have always been those that also work on their own terms, not just as spoofs, and League begins as it means to continue with a wonderful straight-faced send-up of the rain-drenched fight in The Grandmaster 一代宗师 (2013) by erstwhile colleague Wang Jiawei 王家卫 [Wong Kar-wai]. Terrifically staged, and ending with just a quiet, throwaway line, it’s a loving tribute by Liu to a genre that’s threaded throughout his career. Subsequent action is in the same vein, pithily mounted and harking back to classic Hong Kong cinema in its choreography (by veteran Liang Xiaoxiong 梁小熊), played by actors who also have real martial-arts experience, and peppered with movie jokes that gleefully cross genres, from high-school films to AI fantasies.

When, for instance, past master Huang Feihong (Mainland action star Zhao Wenzhuo 赵文卓, authentically wooden) time-travels to the present day, he does so simply by stepping out of his Qing-dynasty house and onto a movie set at Hengdian World Studios. When he’s joined by fellow master Huo Yuanjia (Taiwan American An Zhijie 安志杰 [Andy On], especially good at double takes), the latter is accompanied by his fictional disciple Chen Zhen, played here by Hong Kong’s Chen Guokun 陈国坤 in a spoof of Li Xiaolong 李小龙 [Bruce Lee], who first played the character in Fist of Fury 精武门 (1972). And so on. The funniest of the group, however, is the Ye Wen [Ip Man] lookalike of Hong Kong’s Du Yuhang 杜宇航, who only speaks in Cantonese, is made up like Zhen Zidan 甄子丹 [Donnie Yen], and is always hiding from any trouble. Like Zhao, Du has also played the character himself on screen.

Liu seems to have pulled his socks up after the tired-looking Soccer Killer. The script of League is tight and very focused: after a couple of short sequences (including a laugh-out-loud gag in the metro), little time is spent on time-travel jokes as the masters come face to face with 21st-century Mainland life, junk food and technology. Instead, the plot is pushed forward, with several interlocking storylines developed from a character angle – Huo Yuanjia, for instance, is supposedly a secret rival for Huang Feihong’s great love, Thirteenth Aunt (Zhang Yao 张瑶, nicely droll) – with all tidily resolved by the end. The modern-day youngsters, played by Mainland singer Shu Yaxin 书亚信, 28, and Uyghur TV actress Maidina 麦迪娜 (aka Madina Memet), 31, don’t have much more to do except look pretty. They come over as colourless amid all the old guys jostling for screen time – especially energetic character actors like stand-up comedian He Yunwei 何云伟 as a fast-talking gangster and action director Liang as a grizzled, villainous fighter. That may not have helped it at the Mainland box office but is probably deliberate.

Technical credits by the largely Hong Kong key crew are smooth on every level, especially the sharp, glistening photography by Kuang Tinghe 邝庭和 and on-the-nose editing by Mai Zishan 麦子善 [Marco Mak]. Hardly surprisingly, the so-called “Huang Feihong theme” (originally a folk song) is referenced throughout the music. The film’s Chinese title means “Kung Fu Association”.

CREDITS

Presented by Jiahuan Pictures (Shanghai) (CN). Produced by Shanghai Mengmi Culture (CN).

Script: Huang Jianhong. Photography: Kuang Tinghe. Editing: Mai Zishan [Marco Mak], Wang Gaigai. Editing advice: Kuang Zhiliang. Music: A Kun. Production design: Liu Minxiong [Ben Lau]. Art direction: Lin Peiyi. Costume design: Zhang Ling. Styling: Chen Gufang [Shirley Chan]. Sound: Liu Lijie, Sergei Groshev, Cheng Xiaolong. Action: Liang Xiaoxiong. Special effects: Wang Naipeng. Visual effects: Zheng Wenzheng, Zhou Kunlin.

Cast: Zhao Wenzhuo (Huang Feihong), An Zhijie [Andy On] (Huo Yuanjia), Chen Guokun (Chen Zhen), Du Yuhang (Ye Wen/Ye Biewen), Shu Yaxin (Fei Yingxiong), Maidina [Madina Memet] (Bao’er), Zhang Ziwen (Zhang Peng, company head), Liang Xiaoxiong (Qiao Shanhu, veteran fighter), He Yunwei (Shi Gandang, gang leader), Zhang Yao (Shisan Yi/Thirteenth Aunt), Zhou Ziruo (Chunhua, her maid), Wang Fei (Ling Mu, disciple), Yuan Qiongdan (Ying, charlady), Liang Jiaren (Zhang, film director), Xiong Xinxin (Qi), Lin Zicong (Rong), Hong Tianming (Su), Lu Huiguang [Ken Lo] (Jian, villain), Li Mingyu (thief on motorbike), Jiang Rongfa (Niu), Ma Jian (Rongnan, disciple), Huang Liuyan (female gang member), Guan Xuan (Bao’er’s father), Zhang Mingming (Tao, Shi Gandang’s boss), Yu Mengyan (Bao’er’s best friend), Wu Chenchen (fast-food server).

Release: China, 26 Oct 2018.