Kung Fu Hustle

1930s Shanghai is in the grip of various gangs struggling for power, with the Axe Gang being foremost. Main character Sing is an ineffectual small-time crook trying to join the Axe Gang. In doing so, he and buddy Bone attempt to command respect from the Pig Sty Alley. Their bumbling attracts the real gang, who are repelled by the martially-skilled Coolie, Tailor and You-Tiao (fried dough sticks) baker. What results is an Escalating War between the Axe Gang and the (unusually strong) residents of the impoverished Pig Sty Alley.

Directed, led and written by famous Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow, it is a comedic parody of and homage to Chinese Wuxia films and American musicals from the 50's, best summarized, in the words of Roger Ebert, as "like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny". But really, it has to be seen to be believed.

Compare Shaolin Soccer and God of Cookery, from the same creator.

Tropes used in Kung Fu Hustle include:
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: The axes used by the Axe Gang are sharp enough to cut clean through a man's leg when thrown.
  • Abuse Is Okay When Its Female On Male: The Landlady and her husband. Luckily, his kung fu specialty is absorbing damage.
  • Affectionate Parody:
  • Age Cut: The ending. Sorta.
  • Almighty Janitor: Basically The Movie of this trope, as all of the martial artists in the story have lowly occupations and/or appear quite wimpy until they display their powers. The three undercover masters, the blind musicians, the landlords, the Beast, and Sing are all examples.
  • Anything That Moves: The Landlord hits on a young girl and a Gonk within a minute of his debut.
  • Arrogant Kung Fu Guy: The Beast, who claims nothing can beat him... despite wanting someone to beat him for a while. However, once he's definitively beaten, he immediately and genuinely concedes.
  • Audible Sharpness: From actual blades, but more badassedly: and the harpists' sonic attacks summon blades and at one point a zombie army. Which is, of course, is because they're made out of sound.
  • Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: The ferocious landlady and her lecherous husband, who have been squabbling for the entire first part of the movie (she even hits him in the head with a flower pot), band together to defend the neighborhood from the Axe Gang, fight the Beast, and nurse the movie's hero back to health. They're also named after famous lovers.
  • An Axe to Grind: The Axe Gang had this as their motif.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: During the first mass brawl.
  • Badass Bystander:
    • Low-life crook Sing discovers too late that everyone in Pig Sty Ally could kick his ass all goddamn day. Then the shy, effeminate tailor turns out to be the most badass martial artist of the lot.
    • Sing also gets his ass kicked by a random clerk he keeps making fun of for no reason on a train.
  • Badass Grandpa:
    • The Landlord and The Beast.
    • Also contains a Real Life example: The Beast's actor Bruce Leung was about 55 when this movie was filmed. He did his own stunts. CGI had to assist where The Beast lifted his leg high for the earthquake stomp in the casino due to physical limitations, but otherwise it was all him. And by "limitations" we mean "he CAN perform an axe kick over his own head, but he can't HOLD his leg up there like in the shot."
  • Badass in a Nice Suit:
    • The Axe Gang uniformly dress in nice suits.
    • The Landlady and Landlord, for majority of the movie, wears pajamas and a nightgown. Until they go to fight the Axe Gang, where they have a change of clothes and look a lot more fashionable.
    • The Beast also trades in the dingy tank top, boxers & flip-flops he wore at the asylum for a tailored three-piece suit and stylish leather shoes
  • Bandage Mummy: Sing is reduced to this after his thorough thrashing by The Beast.
  • Berserk Button: As stated above, the Beast pretty much loses his shit after Sing takes a broken post to his head. It's not from the blow, not by a long shot, it's the sheer disrespect of it all. And Sum wasn't very helpful there.
  • Better Than New: The Hero gets fully healed (and becomes much more powerful than before) because being beaten nearly to death by the Big Bad turned out to awaken his Chi.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • In the first attack on Pig Sty Alley, there are three Big Damn Heroes moments, one from each of the Three Heroes. The first is easily the most impressive, involving a lighter being caught by a coolie in a scene that would make the Firefly crew green with envy, and the hero facing off against something on the order of a hundred gangsters. The others are less impressive, but only by comparison, involving a gay tailor sending a man through and beating the crap out of the gangsters swarming the first man, and a congee-making baker taking on three men armed with Thompson machine guns with a pair of blunt sticks meant to roll out dough. Ain't they just Three Big Damn Heroes?
    • The landlords showing up at the casino, suddenly decked out in their finest and ready to do battle with the Beast.
  • Big Little Man: The cowardly hero is facing down a hostile crowd, and looking for an easily beatable opponent to prove his nonexistent skills against. He calls out a runty-looking fellow who, it turns out, was sitting down!
  • Blown Across the Room: When Sum wipes out the Crocodile Gang, he shoots the Crocodile Boss's wife in the back with a shotgun, flinging her halfway across the street.
  • Break the Haughty: When Sing finally defeats the Beast, he offers to teach him his technique. The Beast responds by sobbing, and then he bows and calls Sing his master.
  • Bullet Catch: The Beast demonstrates that he is a Not So Harmless Old Master by putting a gun to his own head, firing, and catching the bullet with two fingers. Any remaining dissent was silenced.
  • Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: The film intercuts between a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis and Sing emerging from his cocoon of bandages, showing that he Took a Level in Badass.
  • Came Back Strong: Sing is practically beaten to death, but he emerges from his cocoon of bandages as a super-powered kung fu master.
  • Camp Gay: The tailor.
  • Casanova Wannabe: The Landlord.
  • Challenging the Chief: Sorta. When The Beast breaks Brother Sum's neck, he apparently becomes the leader of the Axe Gang.
  • The Chew Toy: Sing. He gets beaten up by a string of Badass Bystanders and, in one scene, accidentally takes three knives in the shoulders. His status gets deconstructed towards the finale, however.
  • The Chosen One:
    • Played straight in that Sing's brutal beating clears his chi flow, allowing him to properly use the style he learned as a boy and become a master of kung-fu.
    • The barber kid tried to prove he was it shortly after Tailor, Donut, and Coolie die. Pity he was floored with one punch from the Land Lady.
  • Clothing Damage: Accompanies any Curb Stomp Battle, from the blind harpists' clothes being shredded by the landlady's sonic scream to Sing's clothes burning up on reentry... except for the Magic Pants.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Not only is the Axe Gang dressed in black, not only do the various kung fu masters wear white clothes (most of the time), Sing's wardrobe changes colors to match his inner character through the film.
  • Creator Cameo: Yuen Cheung-Yan plays the hobo who sells the Buddhist Palm manual to a young Sing. It's mentioned in the Director's commentary, however, that the media and most reporters of the movie thought it was Yuen Wo-Ping (his brother, who cameoed in Chow's previous movie), and wouldn't believe Stephen Chow when he said it wasn't.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Almost the entire cast, in fact. Hell, the background characters get their moments. That farmer lady can pack on hell of a punch.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: Near-death Sing is bandaged this way - and quite appropriately comes Back from the Dead later.
  • Cultural Translation:
    • The American sub replaced an offhand reference to two beautiful, star-crossed lovers in Chinese literature with Paris and Helen of Troy. The sub script is Woolseyed in other areas as well, while the dub is more straightforward, including keeping the reference to Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu (from yet another famous Wuxia novel). The French dub preferred the less subtle Romeo and Juliet.
    • "Baker" also counts since Dong Zhihua's character makes fried dough sticks, very similar in concept to the donut, hence his more appropriate sub name.
  • Curb Stomp Battle
  • Cut Apart: When the Beast and the Axe Gang head to Pigsty Alley to confront Sing and the landlords.
  • Cute Mute: The deaf ice cream lady.
  • Deadly Dodging: The Landlord defeats the pair of kung fu villains who double as Musical Assassins by throwing his arms over their necks in the way friends often do. Then he moves his hips and head, causing their punches to strike the other one. Even when a punch connects, it bounces or slides off and hits the other man in the face.
  • Death From Above: Subverted, in that Sing halted his attack as soon as the Beast faked his surrender. Prior to that, he was knocked into the sky by the Beast's Frog technique, which in turn helps Sing realize the full potential of his Buddhist Palm technique before falling back down to Earth - like a comet. In flames.
  • Death Glare: After defeating the pair of musical assassins and performing the first part of a Stealth Hi Bye, the Landlady gets her point across to the Axe Gang leader with one of these.
  • Defiant to the End: After Sing strikes The Beast with a post, The Beast flips out and smashes his face in. The Beast then asks Sing why he hit him, and, rather than answer the question, Sing picks a splinter up off of the floor, and bops The Beast on the head with it.
  • Disabled Love Interest: Sing's love interest, a deaf ice cream vendor.
  • Dragons Up the Yin-Yang:
    • The Landlord traces out a taijitu in the courtyard of Pig Sty Alley when fighting the Musical Assassins.
    • In the cobblestones, with their toes.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: The end of the three masters begins with Coolie being offed in this fashion.
  • Easily Forgiven: The ending of the film, in which Sing has proven to be more than a match for The Beast. Rather than killing him in cold blood like a western hero would, he forgives him and takes him as his first student, giving the mass murderer the same chance he got to start a new life as a good person.
  • Efficient Displacement: The Buddha Palm technique. Foreshadowed when Sing, wracked with the pain of knives and snakebites, hammers the sides of the traffic tower and leaves a barrage of perfect handprints.
  • Empathic Environment: The first time the Axe Gang rolls into Pig Sty Alley, storm clouds gather overhead. Strangely enough, they only gather over the gang proper.
  • Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting
  • Extremity Extremist: The Coolie's fighting style consists entirely of kicks.
  • Fan Disservice: One Pig Sty resident's butt is hanging out the entire movie. Doubles as Running Gag, and he's seen talking up a girl in the background of the final scene.
  • Finger-Poke of Doom:
    • Averted. Sing threatens the Beast and is about to punch him, only to poke him, run behind a statue, and ask if he's okay. Mind you, this is wimpy, jackass Sing.
    • Later handled properly with the Face Palm of Doom.
  • Finger Wag: Landlady, to Axe Gang leader.
  • Flower Pot Drop: Parodied. The character doesn't get up after a pot is dropped on him from a top level apartment, and still played for laughs. When bad stuff starts happening, the recipient gathers the scattered dust around his head to hide.
  • Flynning: The tailor uses the iron rings on his arms to block attacks by the Axe Gang members that didn't look like they were close enough to hit him if he just kept his arms down.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge:
    • Played with when Sing is approaching the Beast through a group of mooks. The camera pans to the Beast's face, looking somewhat amused, then back as Sing reaches him to reveal the aftermath of a foe tossing charge in a confined space. One mook's head is still wedged in the ceiling.
    • The Beast's Toad Style, which throws himself with a lot of force directly at an opponent.
  • Gag Boobs: Anytime the Landlady cranks up her sonic scream to attack level.
  • Gag Dub: In the Spanish version, which takes several liberties with the original dialogues, and makes the characters speak in a variety of Spanish dialects.
  • Gale Force Sound: The Harpists are two villains who fight their opponents by playing a guqin (Chinese zither), which can send anything from bone-crunching fists to blades to a fucking skeleton army. Then there's the Landlady's Lion's Roar, which reduced walls to kindling and, when amplified, manages to temporarily defeat the Beast.
  • Gang of Hats: The Axe Gang all wield axes and perform choreographed dancing in unison. Brother Sum is played by a professional choreographer.
  • The Gift:
    • Namely, Sing having everything punched in gets his chi flow cleared, making him a badass.
    • Foreshadowed when Sing was roughing out the snakebite in the traffic light.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking:
    • The Landlady's ever-present cigarette, which always burns out when she prepares her sonic scream.
    • Sum obviously smokes, but after his first meeting with the Landlady, the next cigarette he lights sets himself on fire. He's also an opium addict, which is why his teeth are all black and messed up.
  • He Cleans Up Nicely: Sing in the finale. The normally slovenly Landlord and Landlady also dress up to the nines when they enter the casino - with the real intention of battling the Axe Gang.
  • Henpecked Husband: The landlord. He deserves it.
  • I Just Want to Be Badass: Sing's main motivation for most of the movie.
  • Implacable Man: The Beast. Takes being punched through walls and flattened into the ground and still keeps going.
  • Improvised Weapon User: The Lion's Roar is a weapon unto itself, but alone isn't enough to defeat the Beast. When focused using a funeral bell as a megaphone, the results are impressive. More realistically, Tailor using his shelf rings as bracers and Donut using kneaders as staffs.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: The Beast attempted to pull a fast one (twice) with a dart gun disguised as a flower ornament when faced with someone who can give him a real fight; the first time against the Landlord and Landlady, the second against Sing.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Sum shoots the Crocodile Boss's wife after pretending to let her go free.
    • Sing stomping the kids' soccer ball is a Poke the Poodle moment, since it's so petty and small, but also establishes the fact that he's a real asshole.
    • Sing robbing the deaf ice cream girl, then laughing hysterically at her as she cries.
  • Large Ham: All of Stephen Chow's "guests" have been given full license to ham it out, and Tailor, Landlady and even the Beast all have their moments. Special mention must be made of Yuen Qiu channeling Bruce Lee in the completely wordless scene in Sum's car.
  • Let's Get Dangerous: Everyone!
  • Lighthearted Rematch: Coolie, Tailor and Donut, crossing into It Has Been an Honor.
  • Made of Iron:
    • Sing gets a comical number of injuries throughout the film. It turns out that it was necessary.
    • The landlords manage to steal Sing away and heal him despite the snot having been kicked out of them.
    • The Beast of course, able to take blows to the head without even wincing.
  • Magic Music: The Harpists fight using a guqin, or Chinese Harp. They can manipulate the vibrations into shapes such as razor sharp swords and skeletal warriors capable of cutting through stone.
  • Make Me Wanna Shout: The "Lion's Roar" technique the landlady uses. Fore Shadowed that she was a badass when she used it to make her angry tenants shut up.
  • Male Gaze: The Crocodile gang boss' wife. Baby got back.
  • Martial Pacifist:
    • Sing at the end becomes an example of this trope, as he opens a candy shop as opposed to, say, teaching kung fu. He, too, faces an arrogant villain, The Beast. It is, however, apparent he's teaching The Beast.
    • The other masters were attempting to live peaceful lives as well. Then Sing accidentally drew the Axe Gang's attention to them, ruining any chance of peace.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The hobo and his martial arts manuals. The manual doesn't seem to work on Sing as a kid, but once he gets his chi unlocked, it's quite effective. The hobo also seems to magically appear at the end of the film without any sign of aging.
  • Mexican Standoff: Parodied when the Beast and the Landlord and Landlady attempt a series of complicated limb-locks on each other, the end result resembling a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.
  • Mickey Mousing: The zither players/assassins play a guqin to fire blades. The side effect is that the music matches the fight, as the music plays faster the more intense the fight gets.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • Sing's Heel Face Turn is marked by a whole series of these. It begins with the (apparently) moral conflict within him as Sum orders him to attack the helpless Landlord and Landlady... only for Sing to turn around and attack Sum. Not out of right or wrong, but stress. Then Sing mans up enough to attack the Beast - only to have his own head beaten into the ground. Cue the futile but significant show of defiance as Sing... weakly picks up a bit of rubble to bonk the Beast, to no effect at all. It Gets Worse.
    • Earlier, there was a scene where the Landlady and Landlord were dancing happily in their apartment after previously shown dancing to the The Masochism Tango. Only for the Landlady to see lipstick on the Landlord. Cue another beating.
    • Also when Sing was dying, he draws a lollipop, showing he was thinking of the Cute Mute ice cream lady. Then the Landlord freaks out, telling him to write in Chinese because he didn't understand what he was trying to say.
  • Musical Assassin: The Harpists.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: A variation occurs when Sing tries to steal from the ice cream lady. He realizes that she was the little girl he tried to save when he was a kid and just how far he had fallen from his previous ideals.
  • Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight: Bringing in guns will just get your ass kicked by Donut.
  • Never Mess with Granny: The Landlady, who just so happens to be made of awesome.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • And the irony of it: Sing gets pounded by the Beast during his Heel Face Turn and mortally wounded, only to have his chi flow cleared, restoring him to life and unleashing his actual potential. Cue a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and Sing appearing again all healthy and sound, ready to punch out whoever gets into trouble with him any day. And it became subverted when the Beast somehow wanted to see a worthy opponent before his eyes.
    • And then Sing gets launched into the sky by the Beast's Frog technique, only to have him fall back down to Earth and deliver a finishing move while falling. Looks like the Beast is a nice guy after all.
  • Won't Work On Me: At the start of the fight with the Landlord and Landlady, the Beast ends up taking a jump kick to the face, and then a punch and a kick to either side of his head, without even budging.
  • Not So Harmless:
    • The Beast. Bald, overweight, and at first dressed in a tank top, shorts, and cheap flip-flops, even The Syndicate that freed him didn't believe he was really the Beast until he held a gun six inches away from his head, pulled the trigger, and caught the bullet. He quickly ascended to being the Big Bad shortly after.
    • All of the Kung Fu Masters get their own moment of Not So Harmless. The Landlord is basically The Comic Relief prior to owning the Musical Assassins without breaking a sweat. The Coolie breaks a guy's SPINE so fast no one knows what happened. The Tailor, of all people, is an effeminate joke before (and AFTER) revealing himself to be the manliest brawler of all Pig Sty Alley.
  • Off with His Head: How Coolie meets his end.
  • Oh Crap
  • Poke the Poodle: Most of Sing and Bone's antics, ranging from trying to skip out on paying for a haircut, harassing random people on the street, and so on, for most of the movie. In harassing the deaf ice cream girl, however, he crosses into Kick the Dog.
  • Punctuated Pounding:
    • Sing picks on a clerk on the tram, who retaliates by rhythmically pounding his and Bone's heads against the bench while berating them.
    • In a similar vein, the Landlady assaulting Sing with a slipper while mocking him with his own words.
  • Razor Wind:
    • The Harpists summon swords with each strum of the qin.
    • It's more or less an interpretation of what their attack will do upon impact. Sometimes they summon winds that can punch your guts out.
    • Based on how they play the instrument. Played horizontally, it creates Razor Wind. Vertically it creates blunt wind (in the form of fists or a shield). It's a really memorable scene.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Subverted and played upon, with Sing. But it quickly turns out to be Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
  • Retired Badass:
    • The Beast, waiting for someone worthy to come along.
    • Also, the Landlady and her husband, who gave up martial arts after their son was killed in a fight.
  • Rock Beats Laser: After being awakened, Sing uses a technique where he stomps on the feet of opposing mooks in rapid succession, resulting in comically paper-flat feet in cratered tile. The Beast sees it and mocks it ("The Toe Crusher. That was old when I was in kindergarten...") but yet falls for it himself later.
  • Rule of Cool: Oh, so, so many... 90% of the movie is either taken up by this, or Rule of Funny. The whole fight scene all the way through with the blind musicians takes both of these Up to Eleven.
  • Rule of Three: The number of times Sing gives a right-leg roundhouse kick to The Beast. The first time he's right back up to let you know he's no slouch. The second time, he nearly needs to put a hand on the ground to steady himself. The third time takes him to his knees.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Beast. Subverted because he willingly checked himself into the insane asylum out of boredom from the lack of worthy opponents to challenge and kill. Of course when we first see him after his cell door is picked open, he's sitting on the john reading a newspaper which makes him Sealed Evil On the Can.
  • Shadow Discretion Shot:
    • When Coolie is walking down the alleyway, about to be killed by the murderous musicians, you can hear their music being played, and a cat walks on one of the roofs and offscreen. However, you can still see the cat's shadow become bisected to the music while Coolie notices nothing. Plus a splatter of blood on the wall. Ominous.
    • Coolie's death is somewhat... less shadowy.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Donut's dying words include "What are you prepared to do?". Before that, he says, With great power... comes great responsibility.
    • "This could be the end... of a beautiful friendship..." He's just FULL of these.
    • The chase between Sing and The Landlady is an obvious tribute to Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, and every other "chase" cartoon out there.
    • Sing juggles a soccer ball and then stomps it flat, shouting, "No more soccer!" This is a reference to Chow's previous film Shaolin Soccer and his refusal to make a sequel.
    • Upon arriving at the Beast's cell, Sing imagines the door opening and blood pouring out of the room.
    • The various fighting techniques demonstrated in the movie contain many shout-outs that had been twisted and parodied in some way for comedic effects. For example, the Ha Ma Gong (literally, Toad Technique, used by The Beast) is a technique used by an infamous poison-master from one of Jing Yong's famous novels. It's supposed to create harmful chi in the target's body, eventually killing them with no external injuries (the toad is considered one of the "Five Poisons" in Chinese culture, along with snake, lizard, centipede and scorpion). In the movie, however, this is taken a bit more literally.
      • ALL the names on the manuals the beggar held at the end of the movie are shout-outs to many of Jing Yong's novels. Audiences unfamiliar with the Wuxia genre will not be able to fully appreciate the parodic values of it.
    • The Axe Gang's introduction is styled suspiciously similarly to The Blues Brothers (complete with a knockoff of the famous Peter Gunn theme music).
    • While the theme music may be inspired by the Peter Gunn one, the overall Axe Gang look and weapon of choice is inspired by Bill the Butcher.
    • When the Landlady appeared in the seat of Sum's car, she wordlessly threatened him with her fists, cracking her knuckles and brushing her nose in a way reminiscent to what Bruce Lee did in Return of the Dragon.
    • The Landlady and Landlord introduce themselves to The Beast as being Xiao Long Nu and Yang Guo, the protagonists of Jing Yong's "Return of the Condor Heroes". This is a Crowning Moment Of Funny for those who know that story, as this is not only so flagrantly impossible that it Crosses the Line Twice, but also rather akin to Rosie O'Donnell suddenly revealing that she's Helen of Troy.
  • Shut UP, Hannibal: While The Beast and Sing fight, The Beast stops to mock his opponent's technique while praising his own. The opponent in question interrupts his sentence by FLATTENING his foot with a stomp, and then kicking him in the side of the head. Worse, the Beast had seen that technique earlier, and mocked it as only fit for children - yet he still fell for it.
  • Simple Staff: Donut's primary weapons are the rolling poles he uses to roll dough. In the battle with the Musical Assassins, he upgrades to Blade on a Stick.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
    • This movie has a rather clearly evident Algorithm, starting with the Shanghai Police completely dominated by the Crocodile Gang, and then the Crocodile Gang getting massacred by the Axe Gang. The Axe Gang are countered by the Pig Sty Alley's three martial artists, who are then countered by the Axe Gang's hired Musical Assassins, who are then countered by the Landlord and Landlady, who are in turn countered by the Made of Iron and superhumanly-fast Beast, who is in turn countered by the Heel Face Turn-ed Unsympathetic Comedy Villain Protagonist. In a slightly jarring subversion, the Beast attempted to use a pile of basic Axe Gang members to soften up the hero before properly fighting him.
    • Though, The Beast never told them to attack. Rather, he just enjoyed the show as those idiots lemming'ed themselves against Sing's awesome might.
  • Start of Darkness:
    • A flashback reveals how Sing got into a life of crime - he tried to protect a girl from a gang of thugs using a kung-fu manual he bought, only to get the shit kicked out of him, laughed at for learning a fake technique from a fifty-cent mock kung-fu manual, and pissed on, thus proving to him that Good Is Dumb.
    • Except the "fake" kung-fu manual turned out to have been the genuine article all along when Sing lets loose with the Buddha's Palm - one of the techniques taught - on The Beast.
  • Stealth Hi Bye:
    • While he's busy turning Brother Sum's head backwards, the Fated Couple make off with Sing before the Beast can react.
    • They pull the Hi version earlier, appearing in the shotgun and back seats of Sum's car with each camera cut.
  • Stepping Stones in the Sky: On a bird, no less.
  • Supernatural Martial Arts: This is a Troperiffic Affectionate Parody and Indecisive Deconstruction of all the over-the-top supernatural martial arts films to ever come out of Hong Kong.
  • Super Speed:
    • One of the Beast's abilities, which he demonstrates by shooting himself in the head, and then catching the bullet in mid-air.
    • And in the fight scene that comes after, he's moving in super speed while the scene is running in Bullet Time.
  • Tailor-Made Prison: The Beast, though he stayed there voluntarily because he ran out of good opponents... by killing them. It's more or less explicit that he could have escaped any time if he wanted to.
  • Threw My Bike on the Roof: Sing stomps the kids' soccer ball flat for no reason than to be an asshole. Behind the scenes, it's also a clever retort to fans who keep insisting that Chow make a sequel to Shaolin Soccer
  • Traumatic Superpower Awakening: After being beaten to within an inch of his life, Sing suddenly awakens to his true power as a Kung Fu master.
  • A Twinkle in the Sky: Sing ends up as this when the Beast launches him upwards with the Toad Technique. However, subverted immediately afterwards, as it ends up as a setup for Sing to deliver the Buddha's Palm onto the Beast.
  • Undefeatable Little Village: Pig Sty Alley is this kind of village within a larger city dominated by criminal gangs.
  • Up to Eleven: The Landlady's sonic scream, already able to obliterate the blind harpists, later gets augmented with a loudhailer.
  • Urine Trouble: Played for drama in Sing's backstory, in which a group of bullies beat up and pee on a young Sing after he tries and fails to use kung fu to defeat them.
  • What the Fu Are You Doing?: The hero starts out this way.
  • Wheel-O-Feet: Rare live-action example, namely the chase scene with the Landlady running after the hero. To reinforce how absurd this is, the hero uses two knives buried in his shoulders as rear-view mirrors, and at the end the Landlady goes flying and ends up flattened against a billboard for pain medication (somehow losing her hair curlers and bra on impact).
  • Who's Laughing Now?: Played with through Sing.
  • Woman in White: The Landlady.
  • Worst Aid:
    • "If you whistle, they'll go away!"
    • It's kind of a running gag with those two. From the same Masochism Tango, came the above "Don't pull it out! / Oh sorry *stabs back in*", which fits just as well. Unless prepared to deliver immediate first aid, or if the object itself is an ongoing threat due to dirtiness or instability, it's better to leave something like a knife impaled in the wound to limit bleeding. But if you do pull it out, it's an even worse idea to put it back in.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: How The Beast takes control of the Axe Gang.
  • You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry: Brother Sum - in a fit of extreme hubris - calls out the Beast and scolds him for letting Landlord and Landlady get away with Sing when they were all on the verge of being killed. The Beast promptly breaks Sum's neck like Linda Blair with a backhand.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.