Drunken Master II (1994)

Drunken Master II (1994)
Aka: Legend of the Drunken Master
Chinese Title: 醉拳II
Translation: Drunken Fist II

 

Starring: Jackie Chan, Anita Mui Yim-Fong, Ti Lung, Felix Wong Yat-Wah, Lau Kar-Leung, Hoh Wing-Fong, Cheung Chi-Kwong, Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Hon Yee-Sang, Ho-Sung Park, Chin Ka-Lok, Bill Tung Biu
Director: Lau Kar-Leung
Action Director: Lau Kar-Leung, Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association

 

I first learned of Drunken Master II back in 1995 when I picked up a special summer issue of “Inside Martial Arts” (not to be confused with “Inside Karate,” “Inside Kung Fu,” and “Black Belt”). There was an article in it about the Top Modern Martial Arts Movies, or in other words, the best martial arts films made from 1990 on. Four of the picks were Jackie Chan movies: Police Story 3: Supercop; Operation Condor; City Hunter; and Drunken Master 2[1]. Interestingly enough, this sounded like the least interesting of the bunch.

When I started collecting Jackie Chan films in earnest in the summer of 1997, I scooped up almost everything that was available (save the obvious Jackiesploitation VHS tapes). It was in the book Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon by Clyde Gentry III that I learned that Drunken Master II not only featured one of his best fights, but was one of his best movies, period. It wasn’t until winter of 1998 that I found this movie at a Suncoast at the old K-Street Mall in Downtown Sacramento. It was right after Christmas, but my wonderful mom was still willing to fork over 20 dollars to pick up the Tai Seng VHS of Drunken Master II, in widescreen with burned-on subs. I watched it that night and was amazed. Some of the best martial arts fighting I had ever seen up to that point was on that tape.

When the film came out in 2000 as Legend of the Drunken Master, I had my dad take me to see it—he wasn’t the type that would brave normal subtitles, let alone burned-on ones. We watched it and he enjoyed it—he got a kick out of Anita Mui’s character. I also showed this to my friends and it entered the realm of the Classics. I actually lent to several friends from both groups, all of whom really enjoyed it. For the past thirty years, Drunken Master 2 has enjoyed a strong reputation among martial arts fans—casual and hardcore—and currently enjoys a 7.5 rating on the IMDB.

The film opens somewhere in Northern China, with healer Wong Kei-Ying (Ti Lung, of Opium and the Kung Fu Master and The Savage 5) and his son, Fei-Hung (Jackie Chan), and servant Tso (Cheung Chi-Kwong, of Midnight Caller and Model from Hell), on their way back to Foshan after a trip procuring medical supplies. While waiting to board the train, one of the soldiers declares that everybody has to pay taxes on their purchases. When Fei-Hung learns that the foreigners are exempt from taxation, he hatches a plan to hide a box of ginseng in a foreigner’s suitcase.

Sometime later, the train stops at a small town where the locals can hawk food to the passengers. Wong Fei-Hung sneaks into the foreigner’s baggage car via a clever gag involving geese and ducks and tries to get his box of ginseng. The thing is, there’s another man, Fu Man-Chi (Lau Kar-Leung, of My Young Auntie and Seven Swords), in the car who’s stealing a box with an identical cloth cover. The two get into a fight, with Fu muttering something about Wong Fei-Hung being a “traitor” (or “lackey”). They fight to a standstill, with Fei-Hung having to run back to the train before it leaves. This is where it gets interesting. The foreigners—mainly British, with a few Chinese employees—report something missing from their baggage and the head security officer orders his men to search all the passengers. When they reach the Wongs’ seats, Fei-Hung discovers that the box of ginseng actually contains an Imperial Seal. Before he (and his father) get into real trouble, a young Intelligence Officer (Andy Lau, of Drunken Master III and House of Flying Daggers) vouches for them.

Once back in Foshan, Wong Fei-Hung tells his stepmother, Ling (Anita Mui, of Miracles and The Heroic Trio), what had transpired on the train. This leads to an extended comic scene involving an oversized carrot (or radish) and tree roots passing as fake ginseng. Anyway, while Fei-Hung is mixed up in the search for a ginseng substitute, we learn that the British consulate also owns the local foundry. They want the Chinese workers to increase their hours without due compensation, and send the new foreman, Henry (Ho-Sung Park, who played Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat video game), to beat them into compliance. Well, it works. We also learn that the British consul (Louis Roth, of Shanghai Shanghai and Ninja Commandments) covets the land that Po Chi Lam, Wong Kei-Ying’s clinic, sits on because it doubles as a kung fu school during the evening and interrupts the consul’s sleep. Uh, okay. Jerk.

Things start to get sticky because the Consul’s men, led by John (Ken Low, of Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead and Crystal Hunt), still suspect that the missing Jade Seal is still in Fei-Hung’s possession. One day, Ling is out with her mahjong friends pawning off her prized necklace in order to buy some new ginseng. One of John’s men steals the necklace, most likely to trade back for the seal. This leads to a huge fight between Wong Fei-Hung and the consul’s thugs, including Henry. Fei-Hung gets incredibly drunk thanks to his stepmother’s intervention and beats the hell out of everybody, but attacks his dad when the latter shows up to break up the fight. The results in a huge fight between him and his dad, ending with the latter disowning his son…again (you’ll understand if you’ve seen the first Drunken Master). That evening, John and his men find Wong Fei-Hung in a drunken bout of self-pity, which leaves him vulnerable to John’s kung fu, which is better than Henry’s. They beat him, strip him, and leave hanging from an arch as a message…

Despite the title and Jackie Chan reprising his role as Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, there isn’t any continuity between this film and the original Drunken Master that shot him to stardom. Historically, the film doesn’t make sense as it’s ostensibly set in the Republic Era, probably between 1912 and 1914. The real Wong Fei-Hung lived from 1847 to 1925, so he would’ve been in his mid-60s when this film is set. Instead, Jackie Chan, who was 39 at the time of filming, plays the character in his early 20s. So, Drunken Master II doesn’t present anything solid from a historical of film continuity perspective.

The film is famous for the falling out that Jackie Chan and director Lau Kar-Leung had during filming. A lot of their disagreements stemmed from how to approach the action. There were disagreements between Jackie and Lau Kar-Leung in just how much wire-fu should be included, in addition to things like camera angles and fight editing. Lau Kar-Leung has generally been a stickler for authenticity in technique over the aesthetic flourishes that his peers are known for. He himself played a drunken master in a cameo appearance in Heroes of the East (1978). It is quite probable that had he remained on board for the entire project, the fights might have been closer in spirit to Gordon Liu’s drunken duel with the Japanese karate master from that movie: true to the drunken forms of Hung Gar (and Lau Gar), but not necessarily something 90s audiences were looking for.

What I don’t know is how much their arguments over the action choreography impacted the final script. I say that because it’s clear that this movie has some notable story issues.  This is most notable in the disappearance of Andy Lau’s character from the film following the train sequence. I don’t know if his character was supposed to be a secret villain or an actual ally, and we may never know. I also think that some of the supporting good guys, like the ones played by Chin Kar-Lok (who has doubled for Jackie on a number of occasions) and Lau Kar-Yung, could have been better explained. In the final product, it’s like “Who’s that short guy with the chin-length hair fighting with the good guys?”

The external conflict is reminiscent of the plot of Dragon Lord (1982), Jackie’s last traditional kung fu movie—if you don’t count The Fearless Hyena 2. Something about the British smuggling rare treasures and antiques out of China to put on display at the notorious British Museum, which is involved in controversies over its artifacts to this very day. The internal conflict has more to do with his troubled relationship with his older, wiser, and more traditional father, Wong Kei-Ying. Interestingly enough, Ti Lung is only seven years older than Jackie. The two fight extensively over Fei-Hung’s use of both the drunken style and drinking in order to perform it. Anita Mui steals the show as Ling, Fei-Hung’s fast-talking stepmother, who is always trying to mediate things between the two conflicting generations of Wongs. She adds just the right amount of overacting to her role, whether she’s picking fights with John’s goons in public or trying to weasel her away out of culture-sanctioned spousal abuse with her husband. I think few people will watch this and come away not loving that woman. God give rest to her soul, that Anita Mui. I think the rapport between these three actors—Jackie Chan, Ti Lung, and Anita Mui—is enough to make up for the storytelling deficiencies.

Plus, you know, the action.

There are four major set pieces and a few smaller ones. The first big fight practically starts off the film and is a traditional kung fu fight between Wong Fei-Hung and Fu Man-Chi, i.e. the director himself. It is a meeting of supreme martial arts talent, not unlike Sammo fighting Lau Kar-Leung in The Pedicab Driver five years prior. The two duke it out with a spear and saber beneath a train, which is where the choreography shines. Shooting fights is cramped spaces is always a dicey approach, but these two treat it as if it were child’s play. They then go at it hand-to-hand in a barn (of sorts) and Chan uses his drunken boxing style, albeit while sober, performing moves like “Drunken Man Lying on the Battlefield.”

The next big fight is Jackie Chan versus Henry and the thugs in the public square. This is where he really busts out the drunken boxing, and is full of great moves and neat combinations. Fans of the first film will be happy to see him unleash all of the Eight Drunk Gods. Our favorite is Jun Holding the Pot (or Lan’s Waist Attack), where he spins his opponent’s head between his arms like a hula hoop. There’s also a nice seven-hit combo in perfect traditional form that Chan performs on a stuntman before he gets drunk. My friends and I always got a good laugh out of that one.

The third fight is the infamous Axe Gang fight, where Jackie Chan and Lau Kar-Leung team up to fight an entire army of Axe Gang members (led by Hsu Hsia, who played The King of Sticks in the first film) at a tea house. This fight feels like your typical 1980s Jackie Chan melee, complete with dozens (and I mean dozens) of stuntmen falling off railings, out of windows, off of roofs, and onto tables and other breakable furniture. At one point, Jackie Chan picks up a bamboo pole and starts fending off the nonstop onslaught of attackers. But he really gets the advantage when the hatchets break up the pole: broken bamboo is notoriously sharp, ya’ know.

The foundry finale has often been cited as one of the greatest fight sequences of all time. It’s broken up in three sections. In the first, Jackie Chan squares off with a muscular European man, played by Vincent Di Tuataane. Di Tuataane originally was a bodyguard for French officials, so I think that says enough about his martial arts capabilities. He fights with a chain, that he either swings or wraps around his arm to enhance his punches. Chan bests him with (sober) drunken boxing. The second part is more vintage Chan, where he faces off with a handful of low-level stooges armed with metal poles and hooks, while John and Henry throw obstacles at him. It is very much a video game-esque fight, but the choreography is phenomenal, especially as Chan has to fend off multiple armed attackers while simultaneously avoiding falling objects.

Finally, he throws down with John, played by his then-bodyguard, Ken Low. Ken Low was a Muay Thai champion in SE Asia before moving to Hong Kong and the man can kick like nobody’s business. My friends and I called them “Machine Gun Kicks,” because he of how many he could fire off in rapid succession without lowering his leg. At one point, Jackie is kicked onto a bed of hot coals, a stunt they had to do twice because he didn’t like the way he fell the first time. Famously, Chan can only get the upper hand after drinking methanol, or wood alcohol. The last part is reminiscent of the finale of The Young Master (1980), where Chan goes into complete rage mode, unleashing all the Drunk Gods in rapid succession, similar to the earlier fight in the town square.

It should be noted that Henry, played by Korean Taekwondo stylist Ho-sung Park, was supposed to be Chan’s final opponent. However, according to the IMDB, he sprained his angle and had his part in the finale reduced. Chan has said that Park couldn’t keep up with the Hong Kong style of fight choreography, especially when they were often hitting each other for real.

Some time ago, I did a poll at the Kung Fu Fandom forum about the members’ favorite fights from movies that multiple classic duels and melees. When I did Drunken Master 2, the fight between him and Lau Kar-Leung got 9.09% of the votes, the Axe Gang fight got 9.09% of the votes, and the finale got 81.82% of the votes for an easy win. And speaking of winning, Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association and Lau Kar-Leung won two awards for Best Action Choreography: one at the Hong Kong Film Awards and another at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards. The entire movie is Jackie Chan fighting at his absolute best. He may have films with better plots. He may have films with better stuntwork. He may have films with better acting, although he does great here. But the fighting is second to…well, few, if any.

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[1] - The Other films on the list were Double Impact; Lionheart; Yes, Madam! (yes, they got the year wrong); Once Upon a Time in China; Rapid Fire; Iron & Silk; Showdown in Little Tokyo; The Perfect Weapon; and Marked for Death.