Viking Night: Kung Fury
By Bruce Hall
November 17, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It feels like cheating, reviewing a short film that barely clocks in at a half hour. You could make it through Kung Fury twice in the time it takes you to finish a load of laundry. And depending on your level of pop culture savvy, you may or may not consider the net experience worth more than getting your shorts clean. But that shouldn’t diminish what an important achievement this is. Kung Fury shares some similarities with Iron Sky, another crowdfunded sci-fi fantasy that also made the most of meager resources, and relied on a historically neutered version of Nazi Germany for comic relief.
The difference is that Kung Fury, at one third the run time and one tenth the cost, Kung Fury offers more bang for the buck, and isn’t nearly long enough to overreach its premise and wear out its welcome as thoroughly as Iron Sky does. It is the brainchild of Swedish writer/director David Sandberg, who apparently decided he was either going to make this silly half hour movie, or die trying.
Kung Fury is set in crime-ridden Miami circa 1985. At a production cost of well under a million dollars, the movie does a serviceable job of recreating the setting. This is accomplished through a combination of stock footage, setting most scenes at night, and using period video effects to obtain a grimy “shot on Betamax” look. Certain portions of the film almost have a found footage quality. It’s almost as though someone discovered Kung Fury on a battered video tape in an old steamer trunk on an episode of This Old House, and spliced it back together using period equipment on board a decrepit fishing trawler. It helps establish a suitably cheesy ambiance, covers up certain VFX deficiencies, and obviates the need for any sort of logical plot progression.
That’s a good thing, because if you spend too much time trying to follow the story, you’re in danger of causing yourself permanent psychological damage. Kung Fury is basically a series of tongue-in-cheek action set pieces, and everything that happens in the story is just a mechanism designed to move on to the next gag. All you really need to know is that Kung Fury is a cop, and he’s damn good at his job. He works alone, he doesn’t do things “by the book,” and his boss doesn’t understand what it’s like on the streets because he’s spent too much time sitting behind a desk. And you don’t have to be a cop to understand how hard it is to do your job when you can’t just kill people and blow things up whenever you want, am I right?
But it wasn’t always like this; once, Kung Fury (Sandberg) was a simple rookie beat cop who idolized his partner. One fateful night, while chasing a garishly dressed kung fu master through the back alleys of Miami (as one does), his partner is killed. Kung Fury is simultaneously struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra, because stupid Florida just can’t get that invasive species problem under control. For some reason, this makes him the Chosen One, the greatest Kung Fu master ever. He decides to use his new powers to fight crime, one gratuitous explosion at a time.
And not a moment too soon. After defeating a murderously sentient arcade machine (just take my word for it), Kung Fury faces his greatest challenge when, for some reason, Adolf Hitler (Jorma Taccone) shows up down at the marina and starts killing cops. Eager for revenge, Kung Fury enlists the help of the world's greatest computer hacker (who happens to work for the Miami-Dade police department) to send him back in time using technology best described as “something something computers Nintendo game glove.”
Of course, it doesn't quite go as planned. But it doesn't really matter, because the fun is in the journey, and not so much the destination. Kung Fury’s detour en route to his final confrontation with Hitler (who cleverly calls himself “Kung Fuhrer”) is mainly an excuse to ping pong between additional pop culture references, and to pick up a pair of Viking women…for backup, of course. None of it makes a lick of sense, even in the incongruous context of the movie’s own universe. But Kung Fury is such a self-consciously, aggressively illogical experience that it doesn't bother me much.
That's not to say it doesn't bother me at all. This movie is clearly intended to cram as many rapid fire gags and subtle references into a half hour as possible, and at this it succeeds brilliantly. If you grew up in the ‘80s (or are a hipster Millennial who wishes you did), you'll delight at the endless shout outs to all the cheesy adventure shows, action movies, video games, tech gadgets and cheap anime you wasted your youth coveting. It's loads of fun, but it's also little more than rapid fire, multi-genre fan service meant for a very narrow demographic.
That's certainly not a crime, unless you believe that the single greatest low budget combination of self-referential action and humor ever made actually deserves a great story to go with it. Or, if as a filmmaker, you want an audience wider than media hungry Gen-Xers and pedantic twentysomethings who confuse the ability to watch Netflix on a PlayStation with actual tech savvy. As much fun as I had with Taccone’s effete, bumbling Fuhrer, this felt like an antagonist best suited for a sequel. And with Iron Sky still being relatively recent, there's a hint of “been there, done that” to that aspect of the movie.
But been there or not, Kung Fury definitely does it better. With so much stupid fun and genuinely incredible action packed into such a short time, it's a lot easier to overlook the rough edges and just appreciate - and maybe even thank God for - the fact that it exists at all. Shortcomings aside (I’m still not sure why one of the cops is an anthropomorphic dinosaur), just knowing that it's possible to achieve something like this for under a million dollars renews at least a shred of my faith in humanity. And getting David Hasselhoff to record what is actually a pretty damn good theme song? That's worth more than anything money can buy. I don't feel like a cheater, I feel like a winner. And so can you, if you have thirty one minutes to spare.
You can watch it while you fold your laundry.
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