Drunken Master 3
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Willie Chi, Lau Ka Leung, Andy Lau, Gordon Liu, Simon Yam, Adam Cheng

Drunken Master 3 is the kind of movie you'd watch while seriously drugged up on something beyond illegal. Lau Ka Leung directed this after splitting from the Drunken Master 2 crew because of disagreement between him and Jackie having to do with wirework. So he went and made this. This, weird, odd, totally incomprehensible collage of weirdness and characters.

Don't attempt to get involved with the story, really. It's useless, weird, beyond earthly knowledge, and totally dumb. But it seemed as though Lau Ka Leung was trying to say something here about poverty or something because he has a bunch of windowed women and children in his wine place. I dunno, and I don't really care either, because the reviews you find here at The Stunt People Web aren't about plot or politics, but ACTION!

Don't expect DM2 here, really. DM2 has such a different feel that it's almost eerie that Leung could go from something that proper, to something this bizarre and twisted. The action isn't over the top really, and it isn't subtle, both of them in DM2 (Choy Lay Fut Fishing Man vs Hung Gar Jackie is subtle, Jackie with stick and Leung vs three hundred axe men is HK an extremity), but it's somewhere in between where there are usually 2 people going at it at once, or something. Anyways, I'll shut up about it.

In the beginning, there really isn't any action. Gordon Liu finds Andy Lau and they do an unimpressive little duel with staffs, nothing great looking. Adam Cheng (a doctor) and Willie Chi (Fai Hong) do a tiny bit of drunken boxing which isn't too great looking outside their house, and then Willie Chi fights against Simon Yam, who plays the most typical yet non-typical gay guy I've ever seen. He has a little wand and uses it against Willie Chi while hitting on him the entire time. Hilarious. They have a weird little duel in a stupid big 12 foot tall car/bus with a steam engine in it and a big pipe sticking out the top (I said it was weird), and things are ok looking, but still nothing great.

Really no good action happens until the end where they all end up in a cult church. Things get good here but don't really make up for the rest of the really bad movie. Andy Lau and Gordon Liu start it off in a confession booth, with Liu in the priest's booth, and they use that little window to throw punches, while strategically sliding it to either punch or block. Very cool. Andy Lau, though he doesn't seem much trained in martial arts, does a fine job and Gordon Liu (still bald) is still cool looking. There are a couple more little fights, basically non-stop action, and Andy Lau squares off against the cult leader for a second which is an intricate piece of choreography that won't be found outside a movie, ever, especially when Willie Chi does some of the blocking for Andy Lau in the choreography. I give it credit, though, because it looks really cool. Andy smashes someone through a torn up confession booth and, not realizing that Leung was on his side, he fights Leung which is a fast part, very good. Adam Cheng comes in and does some blocking against Gordon Liu who throws probably 13 punches/block parries. Drunken Boxing? A little. After Andy and Liu fight spear vs sword, Leung and Chi do a little bit against the masses. Leung goes against a goon and gets mad at him and points his finger, which is funny looking, and Chi fends off 4 guys at once. Not very impressive on the goons' parts, though, because they just dance around in the background waiting for Chi. Cheng fights a woman, and it really looks like Cheng has his own style, but it's kind of weird because it doesn't look like any specific kind of wu shu or anything like that, but who am I to say because I don't know as much as many do out there who could write this review 10 times better. Bla bla, Chi fights against the whitie, which is lame, wirework abouds, the fight ends with Gordon Liu telling Andy Lau, "Damn it, you are righteous!" and runs off.

Yea I'm not too enthusiastic about the last fight, but it's the best part of the movie really. Everything else was purely silly. The colors were mostly brown and red and orange, the music was practically MIDI quality with horrible bits for every single fight, so I figured that if I watched these fights to different music, they'd turn out better. I was right. It helps. But the movie altogether is pretty stupid, really. Leung and Chi, though, do a cool training session on a sloped tile roof, where we see that Leung knows what he's doing. The guy is very impressive for his age, and if you wanna see Gordon Liu, Andy Lau doing martial arts, or Leung still at it, see the end of this, or walk in on it 75 minutes after it starts and watch the rest. But if you want LOTS of martial arts without any wires (there are wires here, really obvious ones too, but they don't change the martial arts content), longer single fights (not 4 of them all going on at the same time in an 800 sq. foot area), and stuff that makes you get into the fight (which this does negatively), then don't even think about seeing this movie. You'll be mad you wasted your time. If you wanna have some fun after smoking some weed or shotgunning the yellow stuff in the bottle under the sink, this should provide entertainment.

4/10 - I think that just the few (4 or 5) TINY pieces of choreography that I liked are deserving of this rating, plus the little cash spent by Leung on this. There isn't enough fighting, not good enough fighting, and it's WAY TOO STUPID to be over a 5. I procrastinated when I said I'd get to watching this film. I'd rather watch the snake vs chopsticks fight in Hitman in the Hand of Buddha, and I mean that.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

2/10 - Goofy and the martial arts are so limited.

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