Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40031 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-03-13
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Legend of Drunken Master
Fight scenes are better than in the Matrix trilogy! This is no joke.
Being a great fan of Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies such as “The Prodigal Son” and the legendary “Drunken Master” also starring Jackie Chan, I eventually came across this.
In the original Drunken Master, a Young Wong Fei Hung (Jackie Chan) becomes a master of the devastating art of Drunken Kung Fu. But only in is movie do you see the true awesome power of his style. This may surprise you but I’m sure that most of the fight scenes in the Matrix trilogy were inspired by this movie. You’ll start to notice the similarities when two masters battle against an impossible number of enemies. Hollywood is all over the place, but jaw dropping fights make it worth it. The last battle is “The best fight scene I’ve ever seen!”, truly outstanding and not a computer effect in sight. TIP: You enjoy and understand it just that little but more if you watch "Drunken Master" first.

A weak sequel and a poor DVD
Drunken Master 2 aka The Legend of Drunken Master is quite a major disappointment for this fan of the original. The very belated sequel to Jackie Chan's wonderfully entertaining breakthrough film sees him still playing a teenager well into his forties, but jettisons most of what made the original such fun - such as Yuen Wu Ping's imaginative and often hilarious martial arts choreography and even the character of the Drunken Master himself - in favor of the old mixed suitcases plot and tedious generation gap comedy.

It was a troubled production, with Chan falling out with original director and co-star Chia-Liang Liu and finishing the film himself, and the end result looks decidedly undecided: there's very little of the comic drunken boxing (and what there is is terrible) while co-star Andy Lau is given a mysterious build-up in the first reel only to disappear from the rest of the film. The final fight is quite good, but this is well below what Chan is capable of.

As usual with the US releases, this US NTSC release is a Miramaxed version: the cuts are extremely minor (the only noticeable ommision is the offensive final gag), but it has been quite horribly dubbed. Sadly, the Asian DVD releases are all in the wrong ratio - 1.85:1 - while this version is at least presented in 2.35:1.