The Legend of Drunken Master

American Title(s): "Drunken Fist II;" "Drunken Master II"  

Chinese Title(s): "Jui Kuen II;" "Sui Ken II;" "Zui quan II" (Mandarin title)

Rated: R

Released: 1994 (China) USA (under original title)

                2000 (USA) under new title and with new ending

Length:  99 min. approx.

Main Cast: Jackie Chan, Lung Ti, Anita Mui, Felix Wong, Chia-Liang Liu, Ken Lo, Kar Lok Chin, Ho Sung Pak, Chi-Kwong Cheung

Kung Fu and more Kung Fu. If you want to see Jackie Chan do some incredible stunts and some jaw-dropping moves, then you should see this movie.

The plot is strange and I’m still not sure what its point was. The plot appears to be that Jackie is Wong Fei-hung, the son of a local doctor, Wong Kei-ying, (Lung Ti) who also teaches people Kung Fu (or some type of martial arts). Anyway, there’s an English ambassador who finds the doc’s apprentices noisy and he gets annoyed because of it. However, we learn about this later. Let’s start at the beginning.

Jackie is on a train with his pop, the doc. They are returning home from a shopping excursion. Jackie doesn’t want to pay what amounts to customs, so he slips their package into the ambassador’s luggage. When he goes to retrieve it, he has to sneak into the car on the train. This is easier said than done. Just watch as Jackie and his friend do some interesting distracting with ducks! Anyway, when Chan gets there, someone else stolen his package. So we watch as Jackie fights this guy beneath the train. This is a blisteringly fast scene of coordination!!!

Eventually, he ends up with a package, but it turns out to be the wrong one. And when he gets home, he has to replace the ginseng (which was what was supposed to be in the package) with some other root. When they arrive home, we meet Jackie’s step-mother (Anita Mui). She’s a strange character that gambles and cries at the drop of a hat.

Rather than run through every little thing that happens, I’ll just go over the high points: Jackie has a quick fight with a local merchant that doesn’t like Jackie flirting with a snake selling chick. Later on, Jackie fights 4 - 8 guys in drunken boxing style, which means that Jackie supposedly gets really drunk. This is a really cool fighting sequence that’s worth the entrance price to see.

Later on Jackie is "beaten" by his dad for being drunk. We see some dumb stuff and finally we find out what the bad guys are up to. They are stealing(?) China’s history by buying (or stealing, I really don’t know) and taking them out of the country. They don’t like Jackie and they send the "Ax Gang" to take him out. Watch as Jackie and the guy that he fought beneath the train take out what looks like close to a hundred guys. Jackie’s friend gets an ax in his back and when he dies, the gang disappears. I don’t understand that part as it seems that they wanted to kill Jackie, not his friend. Oh well.

Finally, we get to see the last fight scene where Jackie does some fancy footwork in a metal-working factory against his own body-guard! Rock on! The body-guard plays the as the bad guy boss. This is the fastest I’ve seen anyone move in a kung fu movie! Jackie is fast, but his body guard is faster for quite a while!!! There was a little bit of fighting right before he got the boss, but it was nothing compared to the final show-down. Watch as Jackie breathe fire! WOW!

This is a cool movie. Much better than I thought it would be. Recommended!

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