ComedyMovie Club

Kung Fury: Because Why Not?

KUNG FURY

kung_fury_poster

DIRECTED BY: David Sandberg

STARRING: David Sandberg, Jorma Taccone, Leopold Nilsson, Eleni Young, Helene Ahlson, Andreas Cahling, Per-Henrik Arvidius, Steven Chew, Magnus Betnér, Björn Gustafsson, David Hasselhoff

GENRE: Martial Arts, Action, Comedy

YEAR: 2015

COUNTRY: Sweden

kung-fury-time-travelSometime in the early 1980s, Miami-Dade Police Department detective Kung Fury and his partner Dragon apprehend a red ninja in a back alley, but Dragon is sliced in half by the ninja while Kung Fury is suddenly struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra, giving him extraordinary kung fu powers that enable him to defeat his foe. Years later in 1985, after defeating a rogue arcade machine robot, Kung Fury quits the force when he is assigned to partner with Triceracop, fearing that he would lose another partner in the line of duty. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler, a.k.a. “Kung Führer”, enters the timeline and remotely guns down the police chief and attacks the precinct through a mobile phone. Intent to avenge the chief, Kung Fury has computer whiz Hackerman send him back in time to kill Hitler in Nazi Germany. A glitch in the system, however, sends him back into the Viking Age. After Kung Fury meets the Viking valkyries Barbarianna and Katana, the Norse god Thor sends him to Nazi Germany for him to finish his job.

3045812-inline-i-4-how-a-kickstarter-campaign-and-kung-fury-turned-david-sandberg-into-an-it-film-directorThe sci-fi-adventure-comedy from the mind of Swedish visual effects artist and music video director David Sandberg, manages to cram every trope of the 1980s cop movie genre into one incredibly action-packed 30-minute short film, complete with everything from mutants to vikings to larger-than-life arcade-game robots. If that doesn’t convince you to spend 30 minutes of your life watching Kung Fury, perhaps seeing the title character and his super-human fighting skills face off against Hitler, who has brushed up on his own kung fu chops and changed his name to Kung Fuhrer, will lure you into the fray.

I have some thoughts about why this might be. For one, Kung Fury feels like it tries so hard. Distractingly hard. It is the movie that would hear me say that and make a joke about the word “hard.” You would expect it to be a dick joke, and—reliably, faithfully, like an old hound who will fucking fight you before learning any of your crummy new tricks—that is exactly what it does. It does this in excess. It does it so much that it stops being funny, then becomes funny again, then stops being funny again. That’s how Kung Fury’s brand of ridiculousness works.

PROS:

  • Combine all the 80’s tropes.
  • Questionably good visual effects.
  • David Hasseloff

CONS:

  • Completely ridiculous.
  • Way too over the top.
  • Kung Fuhrer.

SCORE: 6.5 / 10

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Brandon Stuhr

Who am I? Just some guy who decided to start writing on the Internet years ago and now operates his own brand and site. Owner/Operator of Modern Neon Media, I make all kinds of niche content to suit my interests at the time. DIY Enthusiast, Brewmaster extraordinaire, and avid freak for geek culture. Follow on my socials for a more "on" version of me.

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