Review: Kung Fury (2015 movie)

Over the past six months or so I’ve heard a few mentions of this film, all of them reasonably favorable, so I finally decided to watch it.

What we have here is a half-hour-long, intentionally over-the-top parody of 1980s Hollywood action movies, including multiple sub-genres, from cops to fantasy. I found it reasonably funny and entertaining if not laugh-out-loud hilarious. I should note that a lot of critics loved it, and it won at least a couple of awards, including Best Narrative Film at the Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival.

You should be able to figure out in the first five minutes whether it’s your sort of thing. In fact, I would suggest that you do that and not watch the trailer first, since it gives away a number of nice jokes and surprises you’ll enjoy more if you don’t know they’re coming.

(Incidentally, while Kung Fury was made in Sweden with a mainly Swedish cast and crew, it’s in English. Also, the seeming VHS tape playback problems seen in a few spots are a deliberate joke. And the American actor you’ll recognize is really the actor in question doing a short cameo, not a digital trick.)

Below is the entire film (not the trailer). Once you start it playing, you can watch it full screen by clicking the broken square shape in the lower right corner of the picture.


Link: https://youtu.be/bS5P_LAqiVg

The associated YouTube channel has a fair number of related videos, including a trailer (which, I repeat, I think gives away too much of the movie) that was created as part of the Kickstarter crowfunding campaign to raise the money needed to complete production. (They aimed for $200,000 in donations and did more than three times that well.) There’s also a trailer for the appropriately 1980s-arcade-style Kung Fury video game, which you can download for free from your favorite app store.

Wikipedia has an interesting article about the film, and you can find out more on the official website, which has more background on the production. While the filmmakers uploaded the film to YouTube for anyone to watch for free, you can support them by purchasing a digital download or streaming access for $5. Most of the associated merchandise is sold out.



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