Mafia vs. Ninja
Why should you watch it?
- To find out why the Mafia are the good guys
- Watch “Mick Jagger” throw knives and do kung-fu
- Tao Mao!*
Guy 1 walks down an alley minding his own business (shirt open for beefcake factor). Guy 2 walks up behind him and slugs him in the back with a 2×4 bamboo pole. Start uptempo music.
Guy 1: “My friend, what are you doing?”
Guy 2: “You wanna know? I’m gonna kill you, bastard!”
Yes, that’s how the movie starts. It doesn’t get better.
Guy 2 (Charlie Wu) wanted to beat up the guy who raped women in that alley. Guy 1 (Jack Do) happened to be the first man walking down the alley so Charlie, using his critical thinking skills, figured Jack must be the rapist. After winning the fight, Jack says, “You’re wrong. I’ve raped no women,” which Charlie accepts as irrefutable proof of innocence.
Jack Do’s suspenders were more effective than Charlie Wu
They quickly become friends, and find jobs as poopsmiths. We quickly find out Jack Do is the hero who has to do all the fighting. Charlie Wu is patently ineffective until one fight in the middle of the movie. He somehow defeats 5 ninjas by himself, and promptly returns to his inept self afterward.
Action, not storyline, is the point of this movie. This explains how the Mafia are the good guys: the Mafia and the Ninja both deal in gambling and prostitution. However, unlike the insidious Ninja, the Mafia draw the line at drugs.
Tao Mao is the greatest character of all time
Mick Jagger’s mellowed out a bit since starring in Mafia vs. Ninja
You’ll also see “Mr. Jones, from the States” (a black kickboxer), lots of obvious strings, a lovemaking scene sans nudity, and a bunch of other stuff that makes no sense.
MINOR SPOILER: The movie didn’t end any better. The last line was something like “Too bad I had to kill my girlfriend. Let’s go home.”
Ok. why are asians in these films slant eyed gaptoothed specimens who look like they just crawled out of a badly drawn cartoon? I bet dubbing was bad too. you can’t have a kungfu movie without bad dubbing. The lips must keep moving for 3-5 seconds after the character has stopped talking.
THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN ABOUT!
If you haven’t seen it, be sure to find Kung Fu versus Yoga on YouTube. Surreal.
On the other side of the spectrum, the original Jackie Chan Drunken Master has all the bad dubbing etc and is a GREAT movie, like watching an amazing dance recital (only much better because people get hit in the face n’ stuff).
Annie: If you want an answer to your question, ask whoever casts them. 🙂 Interesting, I didn’t notice Tao Mao was gap toothed. That guy is in a ton of kung-fu flicks and gets 10-15 minutes of screen time. He’s never starred in anything. (And to be fair, the main guy Jack Do is much better looking.) The dubbing actually wasn’t terrible.
Derek: Welcome back from vacation! You’ve mentioned before that we seem to have a fair bit in common, but if it gets to be much more, it’s really going to freak me out. 😉
I have Kung Fu vs Yoga. That movie is 100% worth it if only for the fight against the yoga guy (and the hammy overacting of the Earthenware Monk!)
After looking up Drunken Master (after seeing so many kung-fu flicks, sometimes they just blur together), now I remember it, and it was excellent. They got some great actors for it, like Sam Seed and Hwang Jang Lee.
Thanks – re: KFVY – I have it too but it’s on tape – I should digitize it before the moths eat through it. Right, extended fight scene 1 is what it’s all about. Frankly now that I think about it, not sure I’ve ever made it all the way through to the end.