Director: Yuen Woo-ping, Hsu Hsia (Action)
Drunken Master may just have a typical and ordinary story line of most films, but I must say that the action/kung fu choreography is extraordinary. It is a film where it stretches the limits of it's characters like Jackie Chan and Hwang Jang Lee. Due to the restriction in the editing of films and the limited ways of having a stunt man perform the stunts, most of the fighting was done in long static shots where we see Chan and Hwang maneuver themselves (like a form of dance) in the screen. The characters are actually the stuntman themselves! I am really impressed with the level of fitness, stamina and gracefulness of the different techniques available. At the same time, I felt that Jackie Chan at that point was at his peak when he was able to bring in comedy as well as superb technique and form while fighting. Martial arts film have always been one of my favourite film genres and this film is still considered one of the best yet. Not to mention, I had a good laugh watching the English dubbed version on YouTube.
Kung fu techniques in Drunken Master are often inspired from of different animals, particularly for each animal's special strength/ability, such as the crane and the snake. In Drunken Master, Wong Fei-hung had to master the 8 different forms of the drunken fist technique, that is the infamous "Eight Immortals" in the Chinese legend. It was a joy to see him display all of the eight immortals and how he used it so flexibly to fight his arch enemy. The most enjoyable part was when he decided to have his own version of Lotus Ho (Miss Ho) (何仙姑), that was because he did not want to train her style of fighting thinking that it's very feminine. I still wonder though, whether one who trains the drunken fist technique really have to be drunk. He does look sober even when he's drunk fighting.
[1] REVIEW: Drunken Master by Mark Pollard. Kungfu CInema. Retrieved on 26 April 2011 from http://www.kungfucinema.com/drunken-master-1978-247
[2] Legend of the Drunken Master, The, Review by James Berardinelli. Retrieved on 26 April 2011 from http://www.reelviews.net/movies/l/legend_drunken.html
[3] Drunken Master (Yuen Woo-ping), A Review by Jarret. Retrieved on 26 April 2011 from http://www.coldbacon.com/movies/drunkenmaster.html
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