Movie Shaolin Soccer put actor/director Stephen Chow on the map. Now he's back with another tongue-in-cheek look at Oriental culture with a plot paying tribute to Bruce Lee and Charlie Chaplin. Steve Pratt reports.

ASIA'S biggest comedy director and star Stephen Chow was desperate to stage one particular scene in his latest movie Kung Fu Hustle. etermined to pay respect to martial arts movie master Bruce Lee, he wanted to take off his shirt and assume one of Lee's famous postures to show off his rippling back muscles.

He built a machine mainly to work on those muscles, placed it in his hotel room so he could train every morning and night. Even after weeks of martial arts training, Chow's muscles still weren't up to Lee's standard, but he did the scene all the same.

"My back muscles still hadn't come to a point where I was totally happy with them, but I took my shirt off anyway," he recalls. "That day was so cold. Making films is always like this: on the coldest day, you are asked to take your clothes off, and on the hottest day are required to put on layers and layers of clothing."

He doesn't consider his upper body is as attractive as Lee's, but the Hong Kong born film-maker has other attributes as Kung Fu Hustle demonstrates.

The mix of comedy, action, kung fu choreography and CGI effects makes it unique. His last film, Shaolin Soccer, achieved cult status. Now Kung Fu Hustle looks like marking his breakthrough in the West.

Chow stars as a small-time thief who longs to be one of the ruthless Axe Gang, which rules the roost in pre-revolutionary China. A crowded apartment block, known as Pig Sty Alley, is the battleground, a fight enlivened when martial arts masters posing as ordinary villagers come out of hiding.

In person, Chow is slight and unassuming, the opposite to the powerhouse he appears on the screen once the fighting starts. As for working in Hollywood, he says: "I'd be interested in working with some other talent, from all over the world. With someone who has a real passion for movies.

"Actually, right now my plan is just to focus on directing for my next project. Not to act, direct, write the script and produce. All that work at the same time is really tough."

He accepts that comparisons will be made with other Asian martial arts stars like Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Lit and Chow Yun-Fat, who've gone to work in Hollywood.

"It's an honour to be compared to them. But I think I'm quite different from them because I'm more of a director. For me, I'm more like a film-maker because I create the idea and produce my own films," he explains.

He names both Bruce Lee and Charlie Chaplin among his inspirations, perhaps explaining why he's become Asia's biggest comedy star. Kung Fu Hustle has comedy alongside plenty of fighting and he was aware of taking the violence too far. What there is seems very much in a comic book style. "The balance is hard to find," he admits. "In this story, because it's about the battle between good and bad, I have to build up a bunch of gangsters to be really scary and horrifying. It's hard for me to avoid all of that because, when you talk about a bad guy, there was to be some description of how cruel they are.

"I tried my best to eliminate the violence, keep it to a minimum. But if I don't have how they kill people and carry out their crimes in the beginning of the film, then the whole structure of the story fails."

Despite the energetic nature of his performance, Chow hasn't suffered any serious injuries. He keeps fit by training regularly "because kung fu training for me is not only for the performance but also it's the way that I relax, it's a release".

He takes his time making movies. Kung Fu Hustle is his first since Shaolin Soccer four years ago. That became the third highest-grossing film of all time in Hong Kong, winning seven major awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards including best picture and best director.

He says that to make a kung fu film is quite easy, but to make a good kung fu film that's totally different from any other, is really difficult. Despite his success, he can walk around without being recognised. "I'm not a big star like Jackie Chan," insists Chow, who came from what he describes as a very poor family.

"I'm more like a film producer, a film-maker, and that's how they look at me in Hong Kong. I'm absolutely free all the time, nobody chases after me. I don't have those problems.

"I'm not an idol or a star. Actually, I make a movie once every three years so people don't really remember who I am."

* Kung Fu Hustle (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: ??/??/2004