Huh! Ah! Yah! Ech! Hah! POW! Over the past year I've taken a look at a few different types of Kung Fu film, from the sword-and-soaring Dragon Inn to the masterful comic forms of Jackie Chan in Drunken Master II, arguably the finest Kung Fu film ever produced. With the success of last year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a new generation of Kung Fu fans are itching for more material and many classic films, ignored stateside for years, are finally getting released. With this month's theatrical release of 1993's Iron Monkey, I thought I'd take a look at the Hong Kong DVD of this classic that bridges several styles.

Like Drunken Master II, Once Upon a Time in China, and many other Hong Kong Kung Fu films, Iron Monkey concerns the character Wong Fei-Hung, a legendary Kung Fu innovator. Here he's portrayed as a young boy by Sze-Man Tsang, whose youthful speed and style make his martial arts all the more impressive. He's just one in a large cast of amazing fighters, including Donnie Yen as Wong Kei-Ying, Fei-hung's father, Rongguang Yu as Dr. Yang, Jean Wang as Orchid, and Sai-kun Yam as a mad Shaolin monk with the deadly "wonder hand." Each of these actors fights with shocking style and skill. No one stands out the way Jackie Chan does but they create a cumulative effect that helps the entire film jump with action.

The Iron Monkey of the title is a Robin Hood-esque character who steals from the rich to give to, you got it, the poor. Although there isn't any real secret as to which of the above characters throws on a mask and takes up the cause of the Iron Monkey, I won't reveal it here. Still, the drama that unfolds is definitely entertaining. Iron Monkey mixes styles, sometimes taking on the comic overtones of Drunken Master II, while other times drawing on the dramatic sweep of a Jet Li epic or the emotion of Crouching Tiger (which it precedes by nearly a decade). This mix works well and helps open Iron Monkey up to more than the usual fans of martial arts movies. The film has a visual stylishness that exceeds many other Kung Fu films. Director Woo-ping Yuen (known for choreographing the fights in The Matrix) fills the frame with color and movement.

But Kung Fu fans will definitely not be disappointed. The forms displayed here are complicated and lightning fast. The actors are obviously more comfortable with the wire work than those in Crouching Tiger and your eye fools you into thinking the movements are natural even when your brain is convinced it's trickery. Most of the movie consists of bloodless sparring with no deaths, although the battle royale finale gets pretty gruesome. The final fight, set atop flaming posts, is really a stunner. Each acrobatic leap and jump is mind-bogglingly dangerous and the skill and balance that the performers put to work is astonishing. At least a dozen moments in the film deserve a reflexive "Holy crap!"

VIDEO:
The non-anamorphic widescreen video starts off a little rough, with dirt and speckling, but settles into a pretty good image after a few images. Occasional dirt continues throughout, but overall the transfer is a good one.

AUDIO:
Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are available in Mandarin and Cantonese, with a 1.0 English track as well. Subtitles are available in English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Spanish. Ideally the film would be watched in Chinese with English subtitles but the subtitles fly by so fast and the text is so daffy that the movie becomes overwhelming very quickly. While the English language track is muted and not nearly as robust as its Chinese counterparts it is a pretty good example of careful dubbing.

EXTRAS:
A trailer and a montage of clips from other films are included, as well as some on screen text bios.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
With Iron Monkey currently in theaters, a US DVD release is probably just a few months away. Will it have a better print? Will it include an English track in 5.1? Will it have Chinese language tracks at all? More extras? Who knows? But in the meantime, this is a fine way to see this excellent film.

NOTE: Now that Iron Monkey is hitting the big screen it turns out that the new print is a) beautifully restored, and b) in Cantonese with English subtitles. So, it may be a good idea to wait for the next DVD release to buy, but whether you see it in the theater or on the current Hong Kong DVD, see it as soon as you can.

Other martial arts DVDs:
Jackie Chan: My Stunts
Drunken Master II
Drunken Master III
The Buddha Assassinator
The Last Dragon
Dragon Inn