Back in June, we talked about a Bollywood action comedy starring Hindi superstar Akshay Kumar and featuring kung fu movie legend Gordon Liu. Mixing slapstick comedy and wire-enhanced martial arts with music and dance, CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA is now heading to theaters in North America courtesy of Warner Bros. and they have a new eye-popping trailer to promote it.
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My first impression of this movie based on this trailer can be boiled down to four words: “Hindi KUNG FU HUSTLE.” For a 12 million dollar production, CHANDNI CHOWK looks phenomenal and shares the same kind of wacky magic that Stephen Chow produced, only with better music. I’m not a big fan of Bollywood music but I have to admit the tracks from this film (available for preview at the official site) are infectious.
Check out that ripped Gordon Liu kicking butt! This appears to be his best action role since KILL BILL. Actually, it looks better. Liu is well known among Hong Kong martial arts movie enthusiasts for being one of the top superstars of the classic kung fu era, most notably for his roles in Lau Kar-leung’s THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN where he portrayed legendary Shaolin monk San Te. His shaved head in that film has been a part of his distinctive image ever since.
Deepika Padukone, a supermodel-turned-actress doesn’t look too shabby either. She’s only been a Bollywood sensation for little more than a year after starring in the box-office smash hit OM SHANTI OM (2007) and here she is already going international.
Dee Dee Ku, who has been a key member of Yuen Woo-ping’s stunt team for nearly two decades, choreographed the action sequences in CHANDNI CHOWK. Ku’s previous credits include wire-fu hits such as ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, KUNG FU HUSTLE and THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM.
What is just as exciting is that the film has the potential to send Bollywood cinema into the mainstream here. The main barrier has always been India’s endless love of song and dance which appears in virtually all of its films. Musicals, once mainstream fare in Hollywood, have become little more than niche entertainment for pre-teens and the prestige crowd since the 1960s. Apparently, it never occurred to anyone that the musical could be merged with a working man’s genre, like martial arts or slapstick comedy. Better yet, martial arts and slapstick. Seriously, you put a fighting Gordon Liu and a banana peel joke into the same movie and I’m sold.
Warner Bros. has a heavily vested interest in this film. Looking at the release dates, Warner appears to be rolling it out simultaneously in India, the U.S., U.K., Australia, Singapore, and several other territories. This is highly unusual, especially for a foreign-language Asian film to be released in the U.S. at the same time as it appears in its native territory.
Finally, a Hollywood studio understands how to distribute a foreign movie in the U.S. You don’t buy rights, or in this case fund production and shelve it for two years while gray market imports and online torrents run rampant in the U.S. Only time will tell if Warner’s plan is a success but regardless of how well CHANDNI CHOWK does, more major distributors with investment in Asian cinema including Sony Pictures, Disney and The Weinstein Company need to follow Warner’s example. Let’s face it, Hollywood is out of ideas and unwilling to support unknown talents who do have ideas. Asian cinema may not be brisling with new ideas itself but much of it is still new to Westerners. Besides, a kung fu comedy musical as zany as CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA, which would never be conceived of in the U.S., is just the kind of relatively low-cost, escapist entertainment the world needs right now.
Related:
Bollywood pic co-starring Gordon Liu wraps
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Related Topics:Akshay Kumar • Bollywood • Chandni Chowk to China (2008) • Gordon Liu • upcoming • Videos
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