Donnie, stop posing and look behind you!
Kung Fu Jungle, also known as Kung Fu Killer and Last of the Best, is a 2014 Martial Arts Movie directed by Teddy Chan and starring Donnie Yen. The film made its debut premiering at the 58th BFI London Film Festival on 12 October 2014, where it was a critical and commercial success nominated for numerous Hong Kong Film awards including Best Action Choreography, representing the 4th time note Donnie Yen has won this coveted award.
Mo Ha-hou (Don), a former martial artist serving prison time after committing Accidental Murder, is granted a pardon when an old enemy of his past resurfaces, killing ex-martial artists all whom are close allies to Mo, and Mo is hired by the police to lure the killer out. But when the killer starts targeting Mo's former protégé, the person he is closest to, the battle is now personal.
Kung Fu Jungle includes examples of:
- Actor Allusion:
- Donnie Yen's Mo Ha-hou is a retired martial arts professional skilled in Wing Chun and owns a school in Foshan, not unlike Ip Man.
- Yen's previous movie, Seven Swords, also shows up briefly on a TV screen. No doubt causing a bit of a Celebrity Paradox...
- The Atoner: Mo Ha-hou, a former martial arts master who put himself through a self-imposed exile after committing Accidental Murder with his fighting skills years in the past.
- Babies Ever After: In the epilogue, Mo and Ying is shown taking a picture with the rest of the Wushu academy, and Ying is holding a baby implied to be theirs.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: The modus operandi of Fung, a disillusioned former martial artist, who seeks to challenge the best kung fu experts and martial arts masters, and then use their own fighting techniques to fight, and brutally murder them. Such as killing Tam, the "Master of Northern Kicks", with kick-based fighting techniques, executing Wong Chit, an expert in pulse pressure, by breaking his pulse points and fighting Hong Yip, a weapons specialist, to the death in a weapons duel where Fung ends up winning.
- Calling Card: At the scene of each murder after killing his target, Fung will leave behind a metal "Eaves Swallow" as his personal calling card.
- Celebrity Cameo: Veteran Shaw Brothers badass, David Chiang, as the retired Master Chan Pak-Kwong who works at a noodle stall. But there's also...
- Death by Cameo: Louis Fan, who appears alongside Donnie in Ip Man, as Master Hung Yip, the fourth victim killed by Fung. At least he gets a rather epic fight before his demise.
- Defeat Means Respect: Early on in the film when Mo is shown in prison, a convict who proclaims himself territorial boss of the prison tries intimidating Mo, only to have Mo beat the snot out of his mooks, and then himself. At the end of the film when Mo turn himself back to the authorities and returns to prison, the boss and his fellow mooks now respects Mo and leaves him alone.
- Free-Fall Fight: The fight in the art gallery where Fung fights Tam above a giant skeleton sculpture suspended from the ceiling, where partway through the fight both combatants ends up clinging on wires above the sculpture and battling in mid-air.
- I Have Your Wife: I Have Your Protege-slash-Love Interest. Near the end of the movie, Ying gets captured alive by Fung, in a last-ditch attempt to force Mo out of hiding for their face-to-face confrontation.
- Improvised Weapon: For the penultimate final battle right in the middle of city streets, Mo and Fung ends up nearly being run over by a passing construction truck carrying bamboo poles, scattering several poles on the road. Both fighters immediately picks up a pole each and uses it to smack each other.
- Interesting Situation Duel:
- The art gallery fight on top of a suspended giant skeleton sculpture.
- For the finale, Mo and Fung ends up battling each other in the middle of heavy, moving traffic, requiring each combatant to regularly dodge incoming vehicles while lashing out at each other.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Downplayed, but Fung keeps the urn containing his deceased wife's ashes under his bed, and sleeps with it every night.
- Serial Killer: Fung is a disillusioned former martial artist who now enjoys going on a killing spree, specifically targeting former martial arts experts. The connections between Fung's victims to Mo Ha-hou results in Mo becoming the police's best hope for identifying Fung as the killer.
- Shout-Out:
- This being a martial arts film, various important, influential earlier movies of the genre gets homaged. Notably, posters of The Big Boss, One-Armed Swordsman, and Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain could be seen at various points.
- Footage of Drunken Master is shown on a television. Specifically, the part where Jackie Chan is training himself.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Fung, at the end of the film, has proven himself to be the best fighter, a martial artist of no equal... and then Officer Luk shoots him.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Averted, when Officer Luk arrives in the final battle to assist Mo and Fung, the first thing she did is to shoot Fung dead.
- Worthy Opponent: Mo and Fung considers each other to be this after multiple confrontations and prolonged fight sequences.
