THE SMOKE MASTER Review: A Bold, Comedic Experiment In Fighting As ‘High’ Art

Eight years of development and cultural edification, instilled enough to produce an independent kung fu feature that transcends the boundaries of comedy for a market not usually keen on controversy, now brings us to the forefront of the latest directing effort by debut film duo Augusto Soares and Andre Sigwalt with stoner martial arts romp, The Smoke Master.

For this, we are invited to watch as an age-old vendetta begins to take shape for Daniel, (Thiago Stechinni) and his younger brother, Gabriel (Daniel Rocha) – prospective students of their surrogate father, Abel (Cleber Colombo) who is a Bagua Zhang master. The two routinely train together with other students at their local park where they are soon accosted by two thugs, and the harrassment only escalates further, until one day they brutally attack a classmate.

The incident resulted in a near-fatal confrontation with the gang’s muscle bound leader, Caine (Tristan Aronovich), leaving Daniel fighting for his life just shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday. Little does Gabriel know that the incident nearly broke the rules of a traditional, age-old vendetta enacted by the Chinese mafia decades ago, in the wake of a decisive battle for the rights to the secrets of “Tao Lu da Fumaça”, an ancient kung fu fighting art engineered around smoking cannabis. The vendetta has since cursed Gabriel’s family dating back to his father and grandfather, with Daniel being the oldest, and until recently, training to take on Brazil’s Chinese mafia himself when he turned twenty seven.

With Daniel on the mend and less than a year left to prepare, it’s up to Gabriel to pack up and journey to the mountains in search of the home of the elusive “Smoke Master” himself, Master Yan Wu (Tony Lee). Imaginably, the welcome isn’t immediate as the recalcitrant master tests Gabriel’s will, sun-up and sun-down, before finally employing his longstanding methods and putting Gabriel to work, training him in all eight levels of the style. With effort, Gabriel may very well be ready for the battle that lies ahead, although time may not be on his side when Caine resurfaces, ensuing a final battle that will truly test Gabriel to see if he can learn to “Be Smoke”.

Currently platformed at international sales agent Raven Banner Entertainment, I first caught wind of this film earlier this year – a few months after it began gaining traction with Brazilian press outlets. The film is currently making the festival rounds with acquisition news currently pending, and not for nothing either as a film that presently stands to gain amply from the momentum already brought forth by the recent successes of shows like hit TV/streaming series revival, “Kung Fu”, and the cult acclaim of Bao Tran’s family-oriented hit martial arts comedy, The Paper Tigers.

By all means, Sigwalt and Soares culminate the exact same tone and energy in The Smoke Master, forging a palatable and amply entertaining martial arts comedy emboldened by classic Jackie Chan hits and 90s stoner comedy tropes with Rocha and Stechinni front and center. How the two directors formulate the film’s titular style is an interesting watch as well, with techniques that don’t try to out maneuver or overperform the film’s inspirational kung fu origins; The moves are relatively simple and coalesced into something that certainly provides an avenue on which the film’s action and comedy angles are founded, and for the most part, it works.

The casting of Rocha as the burgeoning wunderkind opposite Stechinni’s more visibly stronger and formidable character is a terrific starting point in getting behind Gabriel’s epic trials to come, and with none other than Lee bringing a bit of “Sam Seed” flair to his role as Master Wu. Lee also gets some screentime in a dual performance opposite another character, and it’s one you don’t immediately see coming in her several appearances in the film, including opposite actor Colombo, who especially shines in his own scenes as the fatherly figure and martial arts mentor to Daniel and Gabriel.

You also get a colorful roster of characters, both supporting and antagonist. Actors Jimmy Wong and Rodrigo Arijon play a couple of stoners, respectively named Zhang and Zhan, who live near the master. We also get to meet Thereza (Luana Frez), who either may or may not become Gabriel’s love interest at some point. As for Aronovich’s role of Caine, well he is the classic kung fu cinema villain. He’s a westerner working in service of the Triads, putting him in charge of serving up the mob’s vendetta against Daniel and his family while overseeing its operations in Brazil. His other business matters for the Triads tend to take a backseat as they aren’t really pertinent to the film’s story progression, so it feels like a few holes are left there in terms of what the film tries to accomplish at times. Still, it doesn’t take too much away from his screen caliber as “the man to beat” in this kung fu spectacle. He certainly doesn’t evoke the same sharpened training of our protagonists, but that doesn’t mean he lacks in fighting skills. Quite the opposite and additionally, with the appetite of someone looking for a worthy challenge.

The task of designing specific fight choreography for this project goes to Sigwalt, in reunion with filmmaker, action coordinator and SFX specialist, Kapel Furman, who are both joined here by Renan Medeiros, who assembled the hard hitting action performed in films like Aldo: Mais Forte que o Mundo (2016) and Garota de Moto (2021). The opening action sequence featuring actors Ravel Andrade and Ye Xin is a more than passable indicator of how the action will bode going forward, and it definitely doesn’t disappoint.

There might be some areas in which the film’s nominal fighting style could have been more illustratively fleshed out by the film’s final fight sequence. Additionally, there’s a lot more that I think the film could have done to develop a few of the film’s characters a little more, although to be fair, the version I screened was a shorter one compared to a longer cut that might be headed toward another market, and so I can’t really speak much on what that version could entail, if anything. 

What I can conclude with, here, is that The Smoke Master is a hard-earned mark of success for Sigwalt and Soares – one that harnesses some of Brazil’s most promising talents. The juxtaposing issue of whether or not the film emboldens drug use, in my opinion, is a non-sequitur when to the film’s explicit intent, which is solely to entertain from top to bottom, which it does.

The Smoke Master will next screen for Cinequest on August 24 and 26. Tickets are now available.

[A previous version of this article was updated with correct casting credits for one performer, and attribution to both directors]

Lee B. Golden III

filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com | Web

Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.