Shaolin Kung Fu
10/16/00
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Shaolin Students, Jet Li

This is a documentary on the martial arts of the Shaolin Temple. It's subtitled, so I knew what the guy was talking about, and it was very interesting. It's the kind of stuff that you'd glance at on TLC, watch it, and forget that you were supposed to pick up your date 2 hours ago. Packed with both fighting styles and kungs, or skills, Shaolin Kung Fu is loaded with material that any martial arts enthusiast will enjoy.

Lots of styles, some of them I had no idea looked so good. There's a part where some monks are doing various animal movements, like Eagle, Elephant, Panther, Snake, and Monkey. As you would expect, they're all done perfectly (as far as I knew) because they're done by the experts themselves.

But I want to talk about these skills, which are called kungs. Here's an example. A guy holds a big roller from his testicles connected by a rope and drags it along the sand. Another one has a guy breaking plates by slapping them with 2 fingers. Another is a guy who lays his temple down on a brick while his buddy smashes another brick over the opposite temple. Another is a ninety year old man leaning against a wall upsidedown with the support of his index finger. Another is the same guy getting beaten up by a 3 section staff and knocking the guy away with no effort. Another is a monk who takes a bowl, makes an immense suction on his stomach, and has 7 other monks try and pull it off without success. These sure seem real, and if they aren't, then they did a good job faking them and that's enough for me because I'm convinced, Shaolin martial artists are pretty amazing, super human all the way. A 90 year old man who looks 50 and meditates all night sitting upright, or in a cave for 7 days straight without food or water. WTF?!

Anyways, it's all amazing to say the least. Jet Li shows up later, but I wasn't impressed with his martial arts until he did the drunken sword technique which was also done in The Shaolin Temple by the bad guy in the house in the middle of the movie. But besides that, the VCD is full of information on the skills, styles, and legends of the Shaolin temple.

Since it's the real thing, I won't rate it. I can give it a big thumbs up (!!) for being so damn cool, but it's no classified as a 'movie' as much as a documentary and I shouldn't rate it as a movie. So, I give it a

GREAT SHAOLIN MOVIE/5 - ??? I don't know how to rate a documentary. If you wanna see Shaolin experts show off their stuff, get this, if you want choreographed fights, don't get this because it doesn't really have any. It's an educational piece and it's pretty humiliating when you see a fairly small guy, probably no more than 40 years old, hold the strength of 2 bulls. ... Wait I think I've seen that before. Um, instead, a boy who is 12 years old perform acrobatics you only see in the olympics, while holding a sword (Jet Li). There that's more like it. Anyways, this is good and I recommend it to anyone even though there aren't many fights (I was wrong, there are a few demonstrations).

UPDATE: 11/15/00 - This is good. I can rate this since I rated This is Kung Fu

5/5

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