Kung Fu Killer, also known as Kung Fu Jungle, was released in October 2014 in Asia, with the US release arriving in select theaters in April of this year. It stars one of my favorite actors, Donnie Yen (Ip Man, Special ID), and it’s directed by Teddy Chan (Bodyguards And Assassins, The Accidental Spy). The co-stars include Baoqiang Wang who is more known for comedic roles but puts his impressive martial arts skills on display here, and also Charlie Yeung and Bing Bai. The cameo appearances by legendary martial arts cinema folks is great too, including Raymond Chow.
So Kung Fu Killer tries hard to combine both Wushu style action with a modern, police suspense-thriller. Fung Yu-Sau, played by Baoqiang Wang, is a maniacal serial killer who is intent on fighting martial arts masters in different disciples to the death. The premise reminded me a bit of Bushido Man in that regard, and my hope was a somehow more involved look at different martial arts styles but that does not turn out to be the case. While there is a lot of good martial arts action in Kung Fu Killer, there is also a lot of time devoted to character and plot building. Normally, that could be a good thing, and I can appreciate the attempt by Teddy Chan and the other producers in trying to evolve the genre beyond a more typical ratio of 80-90% action and story and things get whatever is left. But, I have never grown tired of that formula, so I would have preferred it go that route. However, be that as it may, there is still plenty of value and merit in making a more balanced attempt. But in the case of Kung Fu Killer, I struggled to buy into the characters themselves.
The movie begins with Donnie Yen’s character, Hahou Mo, turning himself into police after having accidentally killed a man in an unarmed dual. He’s serving five years in prison, but he’s a model inmate, causing no issues despite his incredible physical martial arts abilities. Before being imprisoned, he ran his own very popular martial arts school afterall. Well, one day he receives a notice to watch the news that evening. So he does, and what he witnesses disturbs him. A renowned Chinese boxer had been ruthlessly killed in an apparent traffic accident, but as Detective Luk Yuen-Sum (Yeung) and her forensics group quickly realized, this was murder by beating. Hahou Mo, feeling like he knows who might be responsible, tries to arrange a meeting with the Detective who, after a second murder, is struggling to find clues. Mo explains that he believes he knows not only the pattern that is quickly developing by this apparent serial killer, but his reasoning, as well.
The Detective accepts his offer to conditionally free him from prison so that he might help track down Yu-Sau. After a series of near-misses, you can probably predict where things lead to in the end: a big showdown between Yu-Sau and Mo. Other story elements like the fate of Mo’s love interest, Sinn Ying (played by Bing Bai), and the other martial arts masters that are being hunted by Yu-Sau, I will leave up to you to discover. Despite it’s fairly predictable plot, Kung Fu Killer had no issue holding my attention for the course of its duration which is wisely around the 100 minute mark. Although Donnie Yen was the Action Director, I thought some scenes (namely those in which he is not featured), where fairly disappointing and brief. Donnie’s performance is stellar as usual though, whether it be in the heat of battle or in some of the character development / emotional scenes. He’s a superstar for more than just his martial arts ability and I thought he did a good job of reminding us why here. Detective Luk Yuen-Sum’s character was portrayed well enough, but her role makes her character seem fairly inept at times, although not as bad as some of the other police officers and their poor “suspect apprehension” tactics.
On Blu-ray, Kung Fu Killer looks great in a typical 1080p, 16:9 form. The technical quality was clean and crisp, I had no issues with artifacting or poor image quality. There is a boat accident scene around halfway through the movie that had a couple of seconds of bad CGI, but pretty much all of the other wire-work and green screen stuff looks very good. Included audio tracks are a 5.1 Cantonese DTS HDMA, English DTS-HDMA, Spanish Dolby 5.1, and French Dolby 5.1, with subtitle support for English, Spanish, and French.
In addition to a the HD trailer running 1m55s, there is a Making Of feature that, for some reason, is split up into four segments. I suspect the reasoning for splitting up this Making Of into four parts is to make it seem like more content than it actually is. Each segment — “Fight To the Top,” “The Spirit of Kung Fu,” “The Final Duel,” and “Legendary Action Directors” are about two and a half minutes long, with a good ten or more seconds of needless bumpers, which really diminishes the amount of time of useful content further. What is shown however is a lot of production footage, which is always cool to see. But, the cuts between these bits is so quick that you won’t get to focus on a scene for more than a few seconds before they bounce to something else. Something more focused would have been nice, but, given the runtime of these segments and that they are peppered with positive talk from Teddy and the core actors, it’s clear these are just promos anyway, and not a true “Making Of.” This is disappointing, but it’s much better than just a trailer at least.
With that, let’s get to the summary…