'HUSTLE' PACKS COMIC PUNCH.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THIS WEEK'S entry in the extreme-cinema sweepstakes, ``Kung Fu Hustle,'' has charm on its side.

Though almost as crazy violent as ``Old Boy,'' ``Sin City'' and ``Ong- Bak: The Thai Warrior,'' Stephen Chow's wackazoid paean to the martial-arts movies of his Hong Kong youth is so tricked-out goofy that even its bloodiest excesses evoke more smiles than shocks. Only those who don't like their kung fu mayhem mixed with healthy doses of special-effects silliness will really have grounds for complaint.

Well, maybe sticklers for story sense will have a few issues as well. But this is the kind of movie that demands you give up attachments to logic at the ticket booth, so I can only advise you to enjoy the insanity.

Like Chow's previous film, ``Shaolin Soccer,'' ``Hustle'' has been a huge hit in Hong Kong and China. It recently won a slew of the former British colony's top film awards. Director-star Chow comes more from a nonsense-comedy than a martial-arts background, and that sensibility informs every frame of the movie.

But an appreciation of fighting prowess and acrobatic ingenuity also runs throughout the movie. Chow hired no less an action choreographer than ``The Matrix'' and ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's'' Yuen Wo Ping. The wire-work genius appears to have quickly gotten into the splatstick swing of Chow's thing. There are also many beloved second-tier performers from the Bruce Lee era that Chow brought back to play wizened - but no less formidable for their years - warriors called one last time to street battle.

Set in a stylized Chinese city in an alternative-universe 1930s, the whirligig plot is built on a war between the tuxedoed, top hat-sporting members of the criminal Ax Gang and the residents of a sprawling tenement building known as the Pig Sty.

The conflict gets very complicated, eventually involving a Road Runner- fast battle-ax of a landlady (Yuen Qiu), a pair of assassins who conjure ghosts and weaponry from harp strings, The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), master of the grotesque Toad Style of the Kwan School, and, naturally enough, the Buddhist Palm, a move I won't even attempt to explain.

In the middle of all this mayhem is Chow's character, Sing, a scam artist who would like nothing better than to be a member of the Ax Gang, but who really isn't up to the job. Until he is, and evolves into someone else. Then becomes an even higher being still. Or at least I think that's what happens. Anyway, a couple hundred guys are killed, dismembered or maimed during this touching journey of self-discovery.

With an avalanche of computer-generated effects, an arsenal of broad comic shtick and something like a real filmmaker's eye for working all of this and impossible stunt action into a well-composed whole, Chow has whipped up a moviegoing experience that's as thoroughly cinematic as it is completely crazy. Mayhem doesn't get much more fun than ``Kung Fu Hustle'' makes it.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

KUNG FU HUSTLE - Three stars

(R: violence, nudity, language, drug use)

Starring: Stephen Chow, Leung Siu Lung, Yuen Qiu, Chan Kwok Kwan, Yuen Wah, Chi Chung Lam.

Director: Stephen Chow.

Running time: 1 hr. 39 min.

Playing: ArcLight, Hollywood; The Grove, Farmers Market; Century 14, Century City; Monica, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Violent, cartoonish and giddily enjoyable martial arts comedy-fantasy from Hong Kong's biggest star/director, Chow. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

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Photo:

Stephen Chow, left, and Chi Chung Lam take a breather in ``Kung Fu Hustle,'' Chow's comedy of martial-arts mayhem.