Drunken Master
- Thomas Rosie
- Jul 16, 2020
- 2 min read
Overview
Drunken Master is a 1978 martial arts film from Hong Kong and is still a cult classic to this day, it layed foundations for not only films in this genre after its release, but also many video games including Tekken on the PS1 which featured a character based on the drunken master, not only that, this film also provided new techniques used in Kung Fu even today.
Opening Scene
The film starts with someone beating the shit out of some wooden posts. Then he is approached and set on by another fighter, after a brief conversation, the battle commences and within minutes this looks to be the action packed movie I was hoping for.
Next we see the star Jackie Chan, he appears to be training in a dojo with other students and playing tricks on the master, so elements of comedy also which pleases me a ruddy great deal. A fight commences with the master who is furious with this horseplay and eventually spills outside where chaos ensues with lots of slapstick comedy hitting sounds a-plenty and at one point, Jackie is even beating a man up with vegetables, they appear to be large chunky sticks of celery or perhaps even leeks from what I can tell.
Main Story
Well so far everything has been in Chinese, absolutely no dubbing or subtitles whatsoever. I thought just the first few minutes would be like this but now I'm beginning to think I'll be seeing how much Cantonese I can learn in the next 90 minutes. The copy I have is free and I'm not paying Amazon £3.49 just for the sake of understanding what is actually going on.
Anyway... Everyone seems unhappy with Jackie Chan and want to fight him. A mob has arrived who have bought a man completely bandaged up, lying on a stretcher and lay him down on the floor whilst they all have a mass brawl. This will make sense soon I'm sure of it.
Quote
There will be no favourite quotes with this one, as I can not pronounce one word that has been said. I think my Cantonese will have slightly improved when watched second time round.
Favourite Part
Ah excellent, the drunk old Chinese man I've been waiting for has finally arrived, and he's great at kung fu!
Training appears to have begun, but I am completely lost as to what for. Everyone fights each other with no obvious reason, the master gets better with every drink he has. And that is pretty much it. Fin. (See I learnt one word).
I score this film: 3 more drinks before we fight out of 5
Virtua Fighter! That's going back, great game! I could be mistaken about the drink then, I for some reason had it in my head he had a bottle in his hand but may well have been something else. But yes the fighting style was very similar. You just hammered the buttons and he'd do all sorts of fancy shit haha
I remember Dr Bosconovich - a similar fighting style but not quite drunken. Shun Di from Virtual Fighter is the closest.
I did indeed watch the entire thing like that. I thought it would be a different experience and it was. Not a very good one though. The character was in Tekken 3, he was unlockable character called Dr Boskonovic. He was a scientist, but drunk and falling over was his fighting style. Didn't look chinese but the fighting style was exactly the same.
Did you watch the whole movie like that?! I think you would have enjoyed the dubbing the most out of everyone. check out some clips on youtube - it was ridiculous!
Who is based on the Drunken Master in Tekken? Heihachi? Law is based generally on Jackie Chan and Lee on Bruce Lee.
Shane I feel I have missed out, especially reading all your reviews. But on the other hand I thought it could be a good experiment to watch the entire thing and review it without understanding a word being said. I will get round to a version with dubbing when I can source one.