Drunken Master III · reception & legacy
1994 · Lau Kar-leung
How Drunken Master III has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Panned on release in 1994 as a rushed, in-name-only follow-up, and time hasn't rescued it — even Lau Kar-leung devotees who champion his Shaw Brothers classics tend to treat this one as a sad coda rather than a lost gem.
What's debated
The perennial question is how the director behind The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and the choreography of Drunken Master II could put his name on something this slapdash — and whether it's fairer to read it as a wounded artist's rush job than as a real film.
Its footprint
It lives in film culture almost entirely as a piece of trivia in someone else's story: the 'other' 1994 Drunken Master, the punchline footnote to one of Hong Kong cinema's most famous behind-the-scenes fallings-out.
Where it stands
A completists-only curio — watched mainly by people working through Lau Kar-leung's filmography or the Wong Fei-hung canon, and rarely recommended by either group.