Underplayed Gems

Drunken Master (1978)

Drunken Master poster
Original title
醉拳
Directed by
Yuen Woo-ping
Genre
martial arts film, action comedy film
Country
Hong Kong
Runtime
1h 50m
Rated
PG-13
Rating
7.4 of 10 from 1,136 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

A brash young man named Wong Fei-hung is forced to train under a strict and eccentric master named Beggar So. The master teaches him an unorthodox drinking-based fighting style. After much conflict, the student learns discipline and respect.

fast-pacedlightheartedplayfulenergeticcomedicboisterousantagonisticmischievous

What happens

Drunken Master (Chinese: 醉拳; lit. 'Drunken Fist and Jui Kuen'), also known as Drunken Master The Beginning, is a 1978 Hong Kong martial arts comedy film directed by Yuen Woo-ping and produced and co-written by Ng See-yuen. The film features much of the same crew as Yuen's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow released earlier the same year, including lead actors Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu-tien (Woo-ping's father), and Hwang Jang-lee; although narratively unrelated, Drunken Master bears similarities to its predecessor in its story and style. Drunken Master features Chan and Yuen Siu-tien as fictionalized versions of martial artists Wong Fei-hung and Beggar So; in the film, Wong is an irreverent young man forced under the fierce tutelage of So, master of the drunken fighting style; although the two do not originally get along, Wong eventually gains humility and respect for So. Considered an early milestone of martial arts comedy and one of the best films in the genre, the film was a large box-office success, earning two and a half times the revenue of the already-successful Snake in the Eagle's Shadow; it had a significant cultural impact, inspiring numerous later films, music, manga, anime and video games with its depictions of teacher-student relationship and the drunken style, and helped establish Chan as one of Asia's most popular actors. The film was followed by two sequels directed by Lau Kar-leung in 1994: the direct sequel Drunken Master II, in which Chan reprised his role, and the mostly-unrelated Drunken Master III. Drunken Master would be Yuen Siu-tien's final film released during his lifetime, although he would portray Beggar So again in several films released posthumously, including the Drunken Master spin-off Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979), also directed by Woo-ping. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.