Review of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA


Action, Chinese fables, 1986
The movie starts with menacing detectives interrogating EGG SHEN, a Chinatown tour guide. They want information about JACK BURTON (Kurt Russell) a truck driver, but Egg doesn't intimidate easily and tells them Jack is a noble person.  He asks the detectives if they believe in sorcery. When they say no, he holds up his hands and blue lightning flashes between the palms.

Switch to Jack who is in his 18 wheeler expounding on the CB radio about various topics. He drives a friend, WANG LI, to the airport to pick up Wang's fiancée, Miao Yin, a green-eyed beauty. How the girl will react to being picked up in a semi becomes moot when she's kidnapped by thugs who, we learn, will sell her as a sex slave, green eyes being much in demand for that business. Jack and Wang follow the kidnappers to Chinatown and find a series of gang wars with wholesale slaughter. Then three people in big, funny straw sombreros (in Chinatown?) drop from the sky and wreck more havoc. Jack drives his truck through one of them, but the magician just laughs.

Afterwards, Jack and Wang tell Egg Chen and others what happened. Apparently the third sorcerer is Lo Pan, an ancient evil spirit. What can Jack do but help his friend, Wang, rescue the beautiful Miao Yin. Their quest leads them into a brothel, subterranean water-filled tunnels, ancient Buddhist temples and more. There is a lot of martial arts posturing with people screaming 'Hai' (over and over and over again), invincibility potions, a pretty green-eyed lawyer, GRACIE LAW, and Lo Pan, himself, who cackles evilly while plotting to marry one green-eyed beauty and killing the other.

As Jack Burton, Kurt Russell is a wonderful John Wayne impersonator. It's a shame he never calls anyone 'pilgrim'. If you don't take it at all seriously, the film is fun, with humor, lots of action, and even a little titillation (but no tits). My only real concern is whether Chinese people would consider it an offensive stereotype. As a workout movie, I give it ++++.  It will get your pulse up to a run.