Top 15 Kung Fu Movies Ranked - /Movie (2023)

Well, go US entertainment.

VonGino Orlandini/March 17, 2022 11:57 am EST

Let's start by defining the term: The Karate Kid isn't exactly a kung fu movie. "Bloodsport" is closer, but as good as Jean-Claude Van Damme was in his prime, he really doesn't know kung fu. The kung fu genre, in particular, is all about the sophisticated, ultra-fast fight choreography derived from it.Chinese movies "Wuxia"🇧🇷 This art form began in mainland China in the 1920s, although the earliest surviving films such as"Story of Huang Feihong"dates from the 1940s. The genre combines the lively theatrics of Chinese opera with the folk adventures of wuxia novels, usually set in sprawling feudal lands, where a sword-wielding lone protagonist embarks on a grand heroic adventure.

Wuxia was banned in mainland China for decades for promoting "superstition and unscientific thinking"."Chinese Martial Arts Cinema".Production moved to Hong Kong, where the genre thrived in the 1960s and 1970s at Shaw Brothers Studios, producing seminal works such as The Five Deadly Venoms and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, both in 1978. These epic and colorful battle dramas are full of silly gags, silly wigs, and most importantly, intricate fight choreography scattered across the elaborate sets. Wuxia has evolved over the years to include modern crime plots, but what remains are balletic battles that draw on centuries of Chinese martial arts theatrical traditions. Here are the top 15 kung fu movies, ranked.

Sahamongkol Film International

Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior (2003) is the ultimate low-budget modern cinema. Art can truly thrive when the artist is forced to make concessions, and with a meager budget of $1.1 million, Ong-Bak delivers kung fu nirvana. That money also goes a lot more to runPrachya Pinkaewit's Thailand, his homeland, but it still required a streamlined approach. Tony Jaa plays said warrior, and his athletic prowess is the special effect that allows this film to stand out from the bullet-time opera that finally became dazzling four years after The Matrix.

"Ong-Bak" is truly a throwback to the martial arts melodramas of the early 1990s. When a small town's sacred statue of "Ong-Bak" is stolen, the peasants send their long-lost son, a Thai fighter, to retrieve it. A trip to the big city and an underground fighting tournament follow. "Ong-bak" borrows heavily from "Kickboxer", as well as another underrated Jean Claude Van Damme classic, "Lionheart". Tony Jaa's kung fu is also more like Van Damme's ballet dances than the down-to-earth grit of real-life Muay Thai. Jaa long studied his country's native discipline, but he used kneeling, assaults and Thai-style cage art (cutting off an opponent's moves) in the form of an elevated action movie that spawned two prequels in this smash-hitting throwback franchise. . Unlike the cinematic Wing Chun of Donnie Yen or Jet Li, which has little to do with actual combat, Tony Jaa's muay thai is proven in the UFC, and that brutal realism makes this B-movie gem stand out from the crowd. . 🇧🇷

P.T. Merantau filme

"The Raid: Redemption" is the only Indonesian entry here and it was madea big splashfor its intrepid action in 2011. It has all the shaky cinematic flair of an episode of "CSI," but the simple shooting is a nice counterpoint to the whimsy of near-contemporary modern martial arts movies that (like 2013's "The Grandmaster") it can degenerate into elegant self-satire.

"The Raid" makes no such claim. Cinematography has the same depth of field as linear action. Follow a SWAT team as they raid a crime boss's apartment building. When it turns out that this villain's tenants are all machete-wielding assassins, the well-armed hunters quickly become the hunted. As in John Wick, the heavy weaponry threatens to steal the show, but things get really good when ammo runs out and kung fu kicks in at close range. You'd hate to be a stuntman working with SWAT team leader and star Iko Uwais. This man is unstoppable in this film's imaginatively graphic and compelling hand-to-hand combat scenes.

Edko-Film

In the early 2000s, China promoted "wushu" (which translates to "martial arts").added to olympics🇧🇷 The 19th century kung fu story of "Fearless" begins with a vignette of a modern Chinese female officer (Michele Yeoh) in love with the position, and this fight story starring Jet Li is the field. In contrast to some of the disturbing aspects of Li's propaganda film Hero, the Chinese perspective in Fearless is caught up in the competitive spirit of nationalist sporting rivalries.

Li insectou Huo Yuanjia, untrue hero of chinese martial artswho defeated foreign fighters in high-level battles. At the beginning of the film, Li's haughty warrior Huo takes a sip of his tea and grimaces. "It tastes awful! What is it?" His partner responds, "It's coffee. It's a Western thing," and then laments, "These are hard times. The West rules us." Lis Huo, a violent and arrogant drunk, must rediscover his humility through tragedy before he can honorably fight for national pride. As always, Ronny Yu's film is beautifully shot and Li's fight scenes are perfect.

Shaw Brothers Study

1966's "Come Drink With Me" is far better than the cartoon kung fu films that emerged in Hong Kong in the 1970s and turned the genre into a global phenomenon. This 90-minute martial arts treat is bloodier, darker, and packed with convincing swordplay than Shaw Studios' colorful candy like The Five Deadly Venoms. Thankfully, the plot is simple: when a governor's son is kidnapped by a gang of murderous bandits, a legendary swordswoman named Golden Swallow sets out to save him. Along the way, he meets a local drunk who is also a martial arts master, and kung fu punches ensue. Swallow was played by the talented and poised 19-year-old Cheng Pei-pei, who would become the idol of all the graceful yet deadly female kung fu stars to come.

The battle scenes in Come Drink With Me owe more to swaggering American Westerns than to the feudal-inspired melodramas that followed. The film shows clear signs of age, as many important close-ups are simply out of focus. Chinese filmmakers were still busy developing these complicated anamorphic lenses in 1966, but otherwise it's more distinctly cinematic than the flat Brady Bunch cinematography of Shaw Studios films over the next decade. More importantly, Pei-pei can figure some serious stuff out, and his first big job is immensely compelling all these decades later.

Pictures from Warner Bros.

"Enter the Dragon"it's a must-have on lists like this one, and can reasonably be criticized for its sloppy craft and lackluster fight choreography. However, there is still no martial artist who exuded more intensity at the height of his powers than Bruce Lee, although he did.die suddenlyof an allergic reaction to a medication shortly before the film's release. The suspicious-sounding tragedy certainly added to the film's lasting power.

"Enter The Dragon" still works in part because of its simplicity, devoid of computer-generated bullet-time clichés that age like cheese, but this kung fu classic should be understood for what it was: thefirst joint productionbetween Hong Kong and US studios and a blatant attempt to get involved in the martial arts market. The plot is ridiculous, and the plot (besides that excellent mirror scene) isn't as imaginative as many wuxia pictures that came before it. "Enter The Dragon" endures simply because of Lee's presence and legend.

golden harvest

kung fu movie fancredo Quentin TarantinoJackie Chan's "Police Story 3" (better known in the US as "Supercop") contains "probably the best stunts ever performed on film". climb to the top of a helicopter and hang from a pole in the film's dramatic finaletore shoulder muscles🇧🇷 The accident appears in the usual montage of end-credits glitches that are often the best and most captivating part of Chan's amazing films.

"Supercop" is an ironic and literal title in this culmination of Chan's Police Story trilogy. When hired for a deadly secret mission and branded a "super-cop" by his new superiors, he raises his eyebrows comically despondently: "Super-cops in Hong Kong are cheap and plentiful," he says with a nervous smile. This is not false modesty. His characters are endearing and deadly, though Chan himself appears to have nine lives. The 1995 film Rumble in the Bronx could fill that space as well, expanding on Chan-fu's comedic talent. Chan's great innovation was making it clear that his characters value their lives, want to avoid violence and definitely feel pain during fights. It seems like a simple change in the kung fu canon, but all the great ideas seem obvious in hindsight.

lion's gate

There's no real consensus on the best "John Wick" episode. The original is a modern action classic, and the first sequel has that.highest overall score from critics and viewers(if you value those things) but"John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"is the best pure kung fu movie in the series. Franchise is best seen as a cohesive work.

Halle Berry appears as a fellow assassin, and despite thattrain for just six months, shows a capable slide. principalchad stahelskideserves credit for not resting on its laurels in this third film, which ups the ante and surpasses previous fight scenes in style and wit. The gruesome action is fueled by dark humor in a franchise that never takes itself too seriously. Many modern kung fu movies use long lenses and fast editing to hide poor choreography, but Stahelski consistently backs off at wide angles, leaving the slightly frail Reeves (55) to do the heavy lifting in extended fight sequences that hide nothing. 🇧🇷

Mandarin-Movies

"Ip Man" is like the prequel to Mr. Miyagi that we should have acquired decades ago but couldn't. It's one of the best kung fu elevator speeches of all time: what if the story was about the master instead of his annoying apprentice? "Ip Man" is loosely based onBruce Lee's True Mentor, a Wing Chun practitioner from Foshan, China, but that's where the real story ends. In the film, the Japanese invade Foshan at the start of World War II, and Ip must defend his community from an evil foreign general who wants his kung fu secrets. Leader Donne Yen ended up wanting the secrets too.Studying Wing Chun with the real sons of Ip Man🇧🇷 He is also a talented andsurprisingly crackedA martial artist in his own right, which is why his fights with various Japanese villains and local thugs are some of the best choreographed fights in the kung fu canon.

A great excuse for fistfights, "Ip Man" is far less romantic than classic Wuxi visuals (Ip's wife is left alone most of the time, and though she briefly objects, she quickly gets over it). As a hero, he is a combination of Jesus and Buddha. , and a young Clint Eastwood: dedicated, wise, unwavering and absolutely unbeatable in a confrontation. His godlike abilities should spoil the suspense, but this is no underdog story. "Ip Man" is the latest alpha martial arts fantasy and Yen's "northern style" reigns supreme in a fun way.

new beijing movie

"Hero" has some of the best kung fu action ever done on celluloid. It's alsoA totalitarian propaganda filmdressed in spiritual garments and extravagant images. It deftly captures the romantic beauty of the Hidden Dragon of the Crouching Tiger while making a strong appeal to a historical tyrant waging bloody wars of aggression. Jet Li stars as Nameless, a swordsman orphaned by King Qin's murderous ambitions. He plans his revenge, but in the end it is he and his co-workers who fall to their swords as Qin rises to fame and China's centralized government.

"Hero" is a fascinating time capsule of when China began producing spectacular-looking commercial films that claim to be an inverted version of American cinema, where tough guys often transcend the system. Instead, Hero is about tragic sacrifices to oppressive collectivism, as the vast Greek Qin chorus of identically armed guards clamor for greater acts of despotism. The human cost here is presented as poetic and glorious. Is Li's Nameless a representative of Taiwan? Uighur Muslims? Tibet? Hero is an important and compelling film precisely because it is so haunting. Not since Leni Riefenstahl"Triumph of the Will"Was such specialized cinema used to glorify unbridled tyranny? As China rises to become a global superpower, "Hero" may well be the best-made, most disturbing and most consistent kung fu movie ever made.

Sony Pictures Classics

The absolute sign that you're watching a low-budget movie is that it's all set in the woods. House of Flying Daggers uses this money-saving technique so much that the film's titular warriors definitely don't even have a home (more like a humble cabin in the background), and yet the film is impressive. Make the most of your modesty12 million dollarsfinancing throughFilming in a beautiful Chinese national parkwhen the leaves take on spectacular colors in autumn. The remainder of the budget will definitely go towards computer-generated flying daggers, which probably don't look as cool as they did in 2004, but still work in the suspension-of-belief context of the wuxia filming.

"House of Flying Daggers" would be "Romeo and Juliet" if the Capulets and Montagues were dagger-wielding kung fu clans. Zhang Ziyi plays a rebellious member of the said Dagger House, and Takeshi Kaneshiro plays a handsome government boy who leads them through the forest to discover the whereabouts of his rogue tribe. Both cheat in this operatic melodrama, but as their romance blossoms, it's clear that greater forces (and their own ancestors) will fight to tear them apart. It's all pretty, action-packed and almost lacking the thematic depth of a movie like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. This is a great popcorn movie worth watching for the famous fight scene in the bamboo forest alone, but the story keeps you hooked until the film's snowy ending doesn't cool the hot-blooded passions of these star-crossed lovers.

Newline-Kino

"'Rush Hour' is not a kung fu movie!" screams the purist scarecrow I'm making up for this article, but this person is totally out of line. Take a look at almost any list of the best kung fu movies and note that Jackie Chan's undeniable 1998 pop masterpiece (and the excellent 2001 sequel) are conspicuous by their absence. That's a big shame. If Rush Hour isn't a kung fu movie, then the iPhone isn't a phone just because it's great in other ways, too. Chris Tucker's veteran LA cop James Carter knows he's in a kung fu movie. He takes every opportunity to poke fun at Lee's Oriental style of Jackie Chan, a Chinese police officer who has come to Los Angeles to help investigate the kidnapping of a diplomat.

Chan's subtle take on Tucker's brash American is one of the best kung fu crossovers of all time. The graceful way Lee climbs into Carter's sleek convertible solo is his elegant and dignified comeback, despite the language barrier of this buddy-cop duo. Chan helped choreograph the key fight scenes and (as usual) put his body on the line.suffered a leg injuryin the sequence while trying to climb the wet bamboo. Chan's incredible athleticism and bravery are summed up by the testimony of a stuntman who was dragged under a moving boat and nearly drowned during "Rush Hour 2". "I feel like a god grabbed me and pulled me out of the water," the grateful artist told Reuters (viaabc news).

Well, go US entertainment.

Shadow is how 300 meets Old Boy and Hamlet. It replaces the cartoony colors of classic 1970s wuxia with a stark gray palette that borders on black and white. Skin tones are desaturated and large pools of blood flow in this elegant feudal fantasy from the master of modern wuxia cinema, Zhang Yimou. "Shadow" takes place primarily in the royal court of a young but decaying king. Their supreme general is the eponymous "Shadow", a talented body double for a dying man who has long been hiding at court and plans to seize power for himself. This shadow is a commoner involved in royal power games and must play all sides to survive while falling in love with his master's scheming wife.

Zhang's film may lack saturation, but it is a study in contrasts and duality: male and female; the good king and the bad king; The scheming general and his shadow. Images of yin and yang are constantly evoked. It's all interesting if you can manage to go from a slightly slow first act of palace intrigue to the final showdown, fought with sharp umbrellas. "Shadow" has the best scenery of any wuxia film, but strangely hides much of it for the final act of this ultra-violent film. In the end, Zhang's most inventive effort rewards his attention with a heap of meat.

Pictures from Warner Bros.

"The Matrix is ​​one of those movies so copied and parodied that it's almost impossible to look at it with fresh eyes and realize what a revolution it was in 1999.Will Smith's Hilarious Synopsiswhy he rejected the initiative as summarized by Neo. Basically, he thought the Wachowskis' argument was crazy because it relied on inventing a bunch of pre-existing technology to create kung fu action the world had never seen before.

Not that Keanu Reeves doesn't get good publicity, but neither he nor Laurence Fishburne were serious martial artists before the film.Reeves said he trained for four months.in preparation for the shot and none of them are missing anything. All that slow-motion bullet-time stuff is so ubiquitous that it's become a tired cliché. This movie completely changed audience expectations of kung fu movies, as evidenced by movies like Hero which are full of this super slow motion aesthetic. We're still waiting for the next movie that will shake up the genre and make everyone want to emulate it.

miramax movie

Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" duology is arguably the best kung fu movie ever made, but not necessarily because it's the pinnacle of martial arts...Cast trained eight hours a dayfor months. "I thought I was in the damn Olympics or something," recalled Vivica A. Fox. Endless credit also goes to fencing choreographer Tetsuro Shimaguchi, but Uma Thurman and company didn't become Michelle Yeoh in a boot camp. , and that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Tarantino-fu's power comes from the director's mastery of humor and pacing. He shapes each scene by building anticipation and then delivering a payoff. The sword fight between Thurman's girlfriend and Lucy Lius O-ren Ishii is the final duel because Tarantino pays as much attention to the rhythms of a fight as he does to a conversation over cheeseburgers in Paris in Pulp Fiction.

Many modern directors rely on multi-camera shooting. They could block out a scene perfectly, but then throw out tons of "reports" and still end up making the movie in post-production. Tarantino's favorite Tony Scott used this style. Many good directors can make this work, but the best filmmakers know exactly what they want and all it takes is a camera and a masterstroke. Kill Bill is the most faithful recreation of a classic genre by the fetish auteur, which honors and enriches the kung fu and samurai films that inspired it.

sony photos

The title "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is a metaphor for the pent-up emotions of the powerful wuxua warriors in this story. Ang Lee's 2000 masterpiece is just the type of low-key, elegant members of the foreign film academy, andwon four Oscarsamong a string of well-deserved accolades in 2001. It's the culmination of generations of cinema about sword-wielding heroes with supernatural martial arts in romantic adventures in feudal China.

When heroic swordsman Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) learns that his master has been killed by renegade assassin Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei), he experiences a spiritual awakening. He rejects a plan for wuxia revenge and instead pledges his love to a fellow warrior, but when he gives his legendary Green Destiny sword to a local magistrate, that officer's young daughter, Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi), steals it. . 🇧🇷 She is an obedient aristocrat by day, but an arrogant and confident kung fu scholar by night under Fox's tutelage. Jen wants to rid herself of the burdens of home, but she soon discovers that the life of a romantic warrior isn't exactly the release of her fantasies. He must face Bai, Fox and the dire consequences of his own arrogance. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about the tension between duty and desire in the upstanding society of 17th-century China, but it's also a dark tragedy with a beautifully ambiguous ending that denies us easy answers. As in this film's ecstatic ballet of stunning fencing, there is only one choice and deadly consequences.