Zui gui Zhang San

I made the first touch about the legend of drunken tiger when I watched one of Jet Li's Once Upon a Time in China series. I realised that it was a regrettable curiosity after I watched this movie. Actually it isn't too bad but I don't feel it's any better than other popular Kung-Fu films.

The drunken tiger's Kung-Fu is rather sleepy and boring. There are little spectacular scenes that I often had with Jet Li films. The drunken tiger's Kung-Fu is improved when he begins drinking like a maniac but even after being fully drunken, his Kung-Fu isn't really cool enough to grab our attentions for a long time. It seems that the heavy drinking makes him a killing machine but he is still kicked, punched, and seriously stumbled.

Perhaps his girlfriend presents much better and far more skillful Kung-Fu than that of his. The girlfriend's Kung-Fu seems to outperform the drunken tiger in terms of agility, gusto, and accuracy.

The costumes and wigs of western troops are just ridiculous. Some Chinese extras wear blonde wigs and behave like a group of fools. I don't think it's quite convincing to be western allied troops and I don't believe all different allied forces wear same uniforms in same colour and different nationality, nor do they have any ideas to perform a kind of Kung-Fu with the drunken tiger. It lacks reality too much. Try "55 Days At Peking" if you are interested with checking the real history of the Boxers Rebellion in China.

I think the first half of the film is moderately exciting and convincing but the last half of it becomes just an inconvincing and tasteless show. Specially the end is just disappointing. It should have been better. I thought it would continue but it was surprisingly THE END. Who won? and to where do the drunken tiger swim with his girlfriend? No implication and no guesswork.

Likeable characters make you want to enjoy the film, but the script and costumes makes it difficult. They have some decent fight scenes until the armies of Europe and the U.S. appear. The sight of occupation troops would be enough for anyone to fall off the wagon.....especially the drunken tiger.

Cheong San is opposed to the Ching Dynasty and most of the movie centers on him and his betrothed battling with government officials. For me the film took a dive once the officials fled and Cheong San and his followers were left to face the occupation troops.

I also didn't know that the military forces in 1898 were so skilled in kung-fu. Like often happens in HK films....overkill sets in. This must be a series as the DVD case tells us to collect all three and the ending would indicate a continuation.

It wasn't that bad of a B-movie.....just as long as you don't expect more.

The literal translation of the title of this movie is: Drunken Master Zhang the third.

There is only one conclusion from this movie: the Chinese government must be desperate. This movie is made one year after the 1989, the year of June 4th incident, and as a result, the Chinese government was condemned internationally. The Chinese government was in desperate need of rally nationalism to support its legitimacy, and this movie was one of its pathetic results.

The plot is fabricated by altering the truth. For example, the protagonist, the martial arts master specialized in the form of Drunken Fists, although discontent with the corrupted regime, was a loyal army officer and in reality, he actually obeyed the imperial order of staying in the capital and helped the foreigners to restore orders. It was not until 1911 when he was finally fed up with the corrupted regime and joined the Dr. Yat-Sen Sun's revolution to overthrow the corrupted regime.

However, the 1911's revolution was Chinese against Chinese, a regime change, and it would be much better to rally nationalistic feelings if the situation was Chinese against foreign invaders, so the history was changed in this movie to what it is now. A good example of governmental censorship at work.