Drunken Master II – Directed by Lau Kar-leung, Jackie Chan, 1994.

Featuring: Jackie Chan, Lau Kar-leung, Ti Lung, Anita Mui, Ken Lo, Mars, Bill Tung Biu.

Drunken Master II in my opinion is the last truly great Jackie Chan film ever made. Since then he’s made movies which have good fight scenes to be sure, but for sheer energy, choreography and creativity nothing afterwards has come close. There are a number of reasons for this. For one he’s just getting older and naturally that’s slowed down his physical prowess, and also luxuriously long film shoots required for one fight scene were becoming a thing of the past. Reportedly the last seven minute fight scene took FOUR MONTHS  to shoot. That’s longer that the entire film shoot for the majority of films out there. I never tire of watching this film’s fight scenes even though I’ve basically memorized them at this point.

Somehow I’ve acquired lots of friends in recent years who haven’t seen many Jackie Chan films other than his American films. I love showing old classic Jackie Chan movies who think he’s cool, but have barely scratched the surface of how good his films are. Drunken Master II I always view as the one I’d want to show them last, because everything else would seem disappointing. In fact I like it so much that I’ve made it my 2nd major DVD production (the first being a re-subtitled version of Shaolin Soccer).

The reason is that there STILL isn’t a 100% uncut good quality DVD out there of this movie. The best edition is the one with the image at the top of this post, but that edition is 1.85:1 aspect ratio whereas the film is 2.35:1 so you’re missing a lot of picture. The Miramax edition is 2.35:1 but it’s dub only with redone music and sound effects that ruin the film. Also they cut out the ending because they thought it was in poor taste. The picture quality on that one however is great! Hong Kong never did good film transfers so all their movies have looked like they were at least 10 years older than they actually were.

So what I did was took the original Hong Kong audio from my laserdisc edition and synced it to the Miramax picture and appended the missing ending from the 1.85:1 Hong Kong DVD. Oh and of course I re-subtitled the entire thing fixing translation here and there. When I’m done with it very soon I plan on giving copies to all my friends who I know would want a copy.

Don't blink otherwise... forget it, you're DEFINITELY going to miss subtleties in this fight, watch it at least three times.

Story – This is the sequel to the original Drunken Master which is one of the films that made Jackie Chan’s career. He plays famous historical martial artist/doctor Wong Fei-Hung who is more popularly played by Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time in China series. Jackie Chan chose to make him more of a bumbling immature character (presumably before he became the admired figure of history). Jackie is traveling home with his dad from a trip to buy lots of Chinese medicine including a very expensive ginseng root. During the train ride home his ginseng gets switched with an ancient Chinese seal being transported by a British Consul.

I don't look evil do I?

Back at home he has to give the customer who bought the ginseng a fake ginseng root which of course doesn’t end well. It turns out that the evil British Consul is trying to smuggle out precious Chinese artifacts in crates of steel being transported from a steel mill that they take over. So it’s up to Jackie to put a stop to them, and do a whole lot of growing up in the process. Ti Lung plays his strict father and late singer Anita Mui is his troublesome stepmom who is always trying to cover for Jackie.

Action – Aside from the choreography this film is also exceptionally well shot/edited. They know how good everything looks and give us nice wide shots so not a single punch or block goes unnoticed by the camera. The editing flows naturally and you never have to search for the action.

First action scene involves Jackie and Lau Kar-leung who plays an older former soldier who is trying to steal the jade seal back from the British Consul. The first bit is spear versus Chinese broadsword in very small quarters underneath the train. My kung fu sifu says no film has done spear fighting well, but to my less trained eyes this still looks very impressive. This is definitely a scene where I had to watch multiple times each time watching only one person.

Neo can suck it.

After this is a sort of friendly duel between Jackie and a fish monger who wants to go out with a snake seller who kind of has a thing for Jackie. It’s not very long, but what’s kind of cool is that the style of this fight scene is very much like the halting sort of theatrical performance from Hong Kong movies of the 70s where there was a lot more posing and pauses after each hit and block. An interesting contrast to the relentless pace of the fights in the rest of the film.

The next tour-de-force action scene is Jackie using Drunken Boxing against several opponents. He gets really drunk, and the sheer variety of moves he uses against his opponents is staggering. Just as impressive is how well the moves flow into each other. This scene is trademark Jackie Chan with his creative mix of action and comedy. Just talking about it makes me want to watch it again.

Don't fight him! Not when his face is that red!

There’s a bit of a dry spell here before Jackie and Lau Kar-leung vs an Ax Gang trying to assassinate them. Yes, an obligatory Hong Kong ax wielding gang of dozens of guys. Hong Kong films are full of movies with Ax wielding killers, but I don’t know if there’s ever been this many. Jackie versus four guys is great, but Jackie versus dozens of guys is entertaining for lots of different reasons. This scene’s highlight is a number of creative ways of fighting with a bamboo pole that ends up becoming very splintered and broken down from all the hard blows.

The last steel mill scene has basically three core fights in it. Once you’re a few minutes into it you’ll be out of breath wanting more, and you GET MORE. The last three fight scenes amount to about fifteen minutes of pure fight scene awesomeness. Highlights are lots of fire, steel poles, red-hot ashes and Ken Lo’s vertical split. It has to be seen to be believed. 

Unless you're the guy in this shot, I'm pretty sure you can't do this. You're probably not six degrees of separation from someone who can do this.

Outtakes – When you add fire to a low budget Hong Kong film expect some good outtakes. They must’ve had a lot of fire extinguishers on hand for this film. You see Jackie all sorts of bruised, burned and battered for the sake of making these perfect fight scenes. The big stunt of this film is Jackie falling back on a bed of coals and backing his way out of them. You see a different take in the outtakes so you know he did it at least twice!

DVD – Like I said, the DVD with the cover at the top of this post is the best edition on the market. Miramax released it as “The Legend of Drunken Master.” If you’re friends with me in real life, lucky you, just ask me for a copy. 

Favorite Moment – Too many to count but seriously, the vertical split was one of my most fun movie theater moments ever. Oh and also Jackie balancing backwards while drinking his wine. I saw this film first at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I didn’t know anything about it, just that it was Jackie Chan. I had already seen a lot of his films at this point so this was quite a treat.

I don't know who you are, but I'm guessing you can't do this either.

Final Thoughts – See this movie. I don’t care if you don’t like kung fu movies, see this movie. You will be able to appreciate it just like anyone can appreciate the dancing skills of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. Story isn’t the most original or moving thing in the world, but you really haven’t seen anything like this and probably won’t ever again.