Shaolin Drunken Monk
WRITTEN BY JULES GRINDER FOR VHS WASTELAND
‘Shaolin Drunken Monk’ has a few good things going for it, some exciting martial arts choreography, a couple of great fights, and a decent performance from the always reliable Gordon Liu. Unfortunately, these few enjoyable elements are incredibly outweighed by the general sense of boredom that most of the movie will instill in the viewer.
Most of the boredom is derived from a total lack of pacing to the story, a sleepwalking directorial style, and the general unoriginality of the story. In all honesty, most kung fu films lack originality, just like the average b-western from the 1940s, the average low budget kung fu movie tends to tell the same basic story over, and over again. That said; does it come as any surprise when I tell you that ‘Shaolin Drunken Monk’ is a revenge tale? Of course not, because most kung fu films are revenge stories. Would it equally surprise you that a large chunk of the movie involves unconventional training sequences? I doubt it would, because most of these types of pictures usually offer those moments.
The training sequences are among the better elements in the movie, but it’s really nothing new, not from Gordon Liu who before the Kill Bill movies was best known for Master Killer, which was full of unconventional training scenes that bordered on torture. And, of course with the word drunken in the title, we are presented with a heavy drinking, slightly goofy bum of a character who will eventually be the one to teach our vengeance seeking hero how to fight like a drunken master.
Now, I’m going to assume that the old master who tutors Liu in the ways of drunken style fighting is a former Shaolin student; I only make that assumption, because of the movie’s title. But, I’m not so certain where the monk element enters into the equation, because despite having a bald head, Gordon is no monk in this movie. One thing can be said about Mr. Liu’s behavior in this picture, he certainly doesn’t act like a monk at all, unless this was a practice run for the upcoming ‘Monks Behaving Badly’ video which I’m sure you will soon be seeing infomercials for in the wee hours of the morning.
Liu is out to exact his revenge on the man responsible for his father’s death. His path of vengeance begins with kidnapping of the killer’s daughter. He hides his true identity from her, but with the use of flashbacks we are shown the relationship that the two had as children, and when he eventually tells her who he really is, they quickly fall in love. As all of this is happening, we are treated to a series of subplots involving double crosses, and other nasty schemes. All of the proceedings seem to be placed within the confines of the story to serve a couple of purposes, to move us from one fight to another, and to pad the picture out enough to reach a suitable feature length. I swear, watching this movie I was convinced of one thing, that there was no script; they just shot scenes as they went along, making them up on the spot, and editing it together in a fashion that would deliver at least some semblance of a coherent motion picture with some sort of storyline.
‘Shaolin Drunken Monk’ isn’t necessarily a bad movie; it’s just not a very good one either. It works decently as a time killer, there are a few good fights, and probably enough going on to make it worthy of a viewing, but only when you have nothing better to watch at the time. |
