Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

Kung Fu Hustle 2004 / 功夫 2004 /

Shanghai, 1940s. The gangs run everything and only the slums are safe from organized crime, mainly because there's no profit to be had. Sing is a low-life hustler who is determined - as a result of a childhood humiliation that taught him good guys never win - to be a badass gangster. Sadly, Sing is the one guy in pre-revolutionary China who can't do Kung Fu. In order to squeeze pennies out of unsuspecting scaredy victims, he masquerades as a member of the dapper but deadly, Axe Gang. The Axe Gang hack rival gangs to pieces and then celebrate with a song-and-dance number in top hats and tails. When Sing and his overweight, unnamed sidekick enter the especially awful slum Pig Sty Alley their ruse doesn't wash with the locals, who are ruled by an iron-fisted, chain-smoking landlady and her drunken husband. The slum dwellers are revealed as Kung Fu masters who've been living in disguise among the poor. There's a chef, who uses his martial arts skills to shape pastry, and a gay tailor, who uses curtain rings as weapons. The shrieking landlady can run like the wind and her husband can bend his body like plastic. The calamity soon grabs the attention of the real Axe Gang, who wants a piece of the action. And make no mistake, the action is as jaw-dropping as it is deliriously demented. Fight scenes are dubbed with the ringing sounds of pinball machines.