The World of the Drunken Master (1979) poster
1979 · kung-fu · comedy · drunken

The World of the Drunken Master

Directed by Joseph Kuo1h 38m1979
ElsewhereTMDB5.313
  • warm
  • kinetic
Movie DNA

Warm, breathless, measured kung-fu / comedy, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Chan Hui Lau stars in this vintage martial arts film as Chang, the owner of a winery and master of Drunken Boxing, a deadly kung fu technique that, as the name implies, requires its practitioner to be drunk. His relatively peaceful life is interrupted when he catches two boys (Li Yi Min and Jack Long) stealing grapes from his vineyards and puts them to work for him. Over time, he teaches them the art of Drunken Boxing. When the two boys get into a fight with some local toughs, they provoke the wrath of Yeh Hu (Lung Fei), Chang's enemy.

Our read · The World of the Drunken Master (1979) reads as a warm, breathless, grounded kung-fu · comedy · drunken entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of The World of the Drunken Master

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want classic Hong Kong kung fu comedy built around drunken boxing hijinks.

ends upliftingyou’ll be fine aftergrabs you earlygrips by minute 6attention 3/5breezes bysubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if subtitles or 70s martial arts comedy feel too silly or slow.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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