Film Craziness Comes From Calm Chow

YOU WATCH the films of Stephen Chow, with all their kung fu stunts and hilarious sight gags, and you imagine someone wild-eyed, animated and bouncing off the walls. Intense, maybe. Manic even.

But the real Chow, the maker of "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung Fu Hustle" (see review on Page 35), has the demeanor of a taciturn altar boy, or an assured grief counselor, or a young tai chi master, wise beyond his years.

He's calm and peaceful. His voice is slow, deliberate, even soothing. And right now he's trying to explain, in almost perfect English, the message behind "Kung Fu Hustle," which opens this weekend.

Yes, there's a message behind a movie in which the extremely weird and wonderful characters -- in 1940s China -- scream and holler at each other, knock each other stupid with high-flying kicks in the slapstick spirit of the Three Stooges, and then calmly collect themselves. Everyone in the movie seems to be trained to punch, kick, fly into the air a la "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but each is also imbued with the zen of living.

"The movie is a fantasy about . . . " he starts. He mutters something in Chinese to his translator to make sure he has the word right. He gets the green light. Yes. Right word.

"Sacrifice," he says. "It's what we call the spirit of martial arts. To me, it's like you can sacrifice for justice, or for love, for family or for country. It's about being willing to give up his life for all this goodness. This is the traditional spirit that I have learned."

He hopes, he continues, that "Western people will be understanding of this message. It's discipline. But it's also just a movie. If people don't see these messages, don't understand them, it's still entertaining. No big deal."

Many of the big face-offs, as the characters prepare to fight each other, seem like the stuff of Sergio Leone, the western meister who made all those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. Was that an influence at all? The questioner even starts to whistle the famous theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Chow completes the theme with his own whistling.

"Yes, we have this idea in the East," he says, clearly savoring the music in his head. "A good idea is born everywhere. We are connected. You have your western gunfighters. We also have swordsmen."

He pronounces the "w" in swordsmen. Chow grew up in Hong Kong and his real influences are Chinese movies. His primary market is also the mainland. So he's excited, he says, that western audiences respond to his films. He will continue working in Hong Kong, however. He won't be following the route of fellow countryman Jackie Chan, who translated his huge Asian following to a western one but transformed himself into a goofball clown (some critics have used harsher terms, invoking Stepin Fetchit) in the process.

So what is his next film?