KUNG FU (功夫) (2026)

Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Giddens Ko
Cast: Leon Dai, Kai Ko, Berant Zhu, Gingle Wang, Liu Kuan-ting
Runtime: 2 hrs 7 min
Rating: M18 (Violence & Coarse Language)
Released By: Golden Village
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 13 February 2026

Synopsis: A high-school underdog, Yuan (Kai Ko), intervenes to help a homeless man on his way home-only for both to get beaten up. The bloodied vagrant claims to be Huang Jun (Leon Dai), a once-great warrior now weakened and recovering. When Yuan gets home, still flashes on how bad the day has been, the homeless man appears outside his 4th-floor window, leaving a cryptic demand: “Make Me Your Master.” Yuan recruits his buddy, Ah-yi (Barent Zhu), to pledge themselves as Huang’s disciples. They learn how to defy gravity, dancing across eaves and walls, and harness inner qi to shatter stone walls. They also discover the grievances between Huang and his fellow junior disciple, Lan Jin (Liu Kuanting), 500 years ago. At first, Yuan and Ah-yi revel in their newfound power- playing heroes, righting petty wrongs with fists and flair. But their idealism cracks as brutal killings stain the city’s shadows- Lan Jin, now a demon king, is awakening. A storm of blood looms, and with it, Yuan uncovers the big secret behind “Kung-Fu”…..

Movie Review:

‘Kung Fu’ isn’t the movie it sells itself to be, nor therefore the movie you would be expecting it to be. In some instances, that can be a pleasant surprise; but in this case, it is an infuriating turnoff.

At least for the first act, director/writer Giddens Ko stays true to its stated premise of two high-school students, Yuan (Kai Ko) and Yi (Barent Zhu), who stumble upon a homeless vagrant beaten up by a bunch of local street bullies, show him a spot of kindness by offering him a clean shirt, and are suddenly given the chance to acquire superhuman ‘kung fu’ abilities. ‘Make me your master”, scribbles the vagrant Huang Jun (Leon Dai), outside Yuan’s fourth-floor window, interrupting Yuan’s masturbation to a sexy magazine.

Though they initially reject his offer, Yuan and Yi are persuaded to give it a try after personally encountering the group of bullies, who demand protection money from the neighbourhood red bean ice seller and threaten to beat them up unless they swallow their leader’s spit on their bowl of dessert. It is gross-out humour all right, but admittedly laugh-out-loud amusing; unfortunately, it also happens to be the best scene of the movie.

From that point early on in the movie, it starts to go downhill, as Huang Jun’s method turns out to be a cringe-worthy mixture of snake venom and ‘qi’, which result in plenty of frothing from the mouth and hissing from every orifice. Yuan and Yi’s antics also garner the attention of Yuan’s love interest Jing (Gingle Wang), the daughter of the red bean ice seller, who happens to be Yi’s love interest. Yes, the setup is a little bizarre to say the least, but relative to everything else that comes after, the very definition of normal.

Ko takes us through the usual beats with a series of training montages showing us how Yuan and Yi – and later on, Jing – learn to make the most of their powers. These scenes are still fairly entertaining, and that includes an extended sequence in which Huang Jun recounts how he had been bestowed his Master’s powers after his fellow disciple Lan Jin (Liu Kuan-ting) grew obsessed over trying to master divine ‘kung fu’ and ended up going on a killing rampage.

Not surprisingly, Lan Jin makes a return in the third act, although that is also where the movie goes completely off the rails. It even manages to eviscerate what the second act had set up as potentially the film’s main villain, a corrupt politician that terrorises her constituents into voting for her or for crossing her path, by impaling her, after dismembering her goons. Oh yes, the sudden turn of violence midway through the movie is disconcerting to say the least, and we dare say, unnecessary.

What really takes the cake is the late-stage shift into a bio-experiment horror and without giving too much away, let’s just say that it not just pulls the rug from under your feet but in fact throws the very premise on which it was constructed out of the bus. We’d give Ko brownie points for not being constrained by genre convention, but the about-turn here is otherwise absolutely infuriating, revealing ultimately that Ko never had any intention to pay tribute whatsoever to martial arts cinema, treating it instead as a joke to be chewed on and spitted out.

By the time Yuan bursts out of his clothes to transform into a bulging superhero on the shoulders of a huge Buddha statue, we can say we had totally had it with this piece of trash. Not only does it squander any goodwill it had accumulated in its first act, it will leave you exasperated at its seemingly indifferent attitude to violence and brutality, which we are sure will hardly go down well with the Lunar New Year crowd.

It’s a ‘Con Fu’ all right, and one that leaves such a bitter taste in your mouth you feel like spitting on it despite the festive mood. This is not homage, not even a spoof; it is just the wanton self-indulgence of a filmmaker who thinks his own excesses are our definition of funny. Word of advice? Stay far far away from it, if you do not want to ruin your Lunar New Year.

Movie Rating:

(A crass, genre-baiting bait-and-switch, Kung Fu squanders its fun premise in a jarring spiral into gratuitous excess and self-indulgent chaos)

Review by Gabriel Chong