The Legend Of The Drunken Master Reviewby Tim Wick

This review may be considered to be a bit late by just about any measure you use. This film was originally released in Hong Kong in 1994. It received it's major theatrical release in the US recently, but has been in the theatres for about a month now. I finally saw it on Friday, passing up such new releases as Little Nicky and Men of Honor. I also skipped stuff that I haven't managed to see yet, like The Legend of Bagger Vance and Billy Elliott.

But the fact is that I was looking for a fluffy, fun movie. I'd spent most of the week slogging through heavy morality tales like 28 Days, Crazy in Alabama and Rules of Engagement. I needed to watch Jackie Chan kick some major ass.

Let me just say that the major problem with Jackie's US releases is the dubbed dialogue. I really do enjoy foreign film, but prefer to watch it in the language it was filmed in. I'm a subtitle guy all the way. Just about any major theatrical release in the US will go with dubbing and that just drives me nuts. Anyway, that is something that I always have to overcome when watching a Jackie Chan at the local General Cinema multiplex.

The other thing one has to overcome is the plot that has been hacked to pieces because the distributor figures all we care about are the fights. In this particular case with this particular viewer at this particular time, they happened to be right. But usually they are not. There are tons of plot holes in this movie that I'm pretty sure aren't there in the original release. Oh, I'll bet the original release has plot holes, but not quite as many.

But the point is that Drunken Master is not trying to win any Oscars. Heck, it's not even trying to win a "People's Choice" award. All it is trying to do is remind you that Jackie Chan is an alien from another world and we all would be better off subjecting ourselves to his will rather than engage in futile efforts to defeat him. Once you recognize that fact, the current electoral dispute is far less interesting.

The difference between Chan's character in this film and his character in most of his other films is the martial arts style he uses. It seem his character is the master of the "drunken boxing" style of martial arts. Using this style, the more he drinks, the better he fights (up to a point). There is no particularly good reason for this to be the case except it allows Chan to fight in a way that is nothing short of amazing. His stumbling, stunted fight scenes are absolutely amazing to watch and make the films faults easy to ignore.

I went to the film to watch Jackie Chan kick some butt and was not disappointed. In the final analysis, that is really all that is important.

The Legend of the Drunken Master

Four Beakers
(out of five)

Search This Site