Kung Fu Hustle

Director: Stephen Chow

2004 / 99min / 35mm

Golden Harvest wuxia meets Looney Tunes lunacy meets Chaplinesque underdog fantasy in Chow’s anything-goes, over-the-over-the-top masterpiece, in which he stars as a would-be gangster caught between sparring rival factions in Pig Sty Alley, a corner of a stylized soundstage 1930s Shanghai watched over by Yuen Qui’s slatternly, superpowered landlady. With a little Hollywood money and a boundless imagination, Chow creates nothing short of a contemporary classic—you can’t knock the Hustle.