Who needs a funny caption?
Big Trouble In Little China (1986) is an old favorite of mine, but, sadly, it falls into that category of rose-tinted glasses movies. Yes, rather than howling with laughter, I chuckled, sometimes shaking my head, and I confess I wondered if the impetuously censorious among the current young generation would shake their fingers and scream in constructed outrage at certain points.
Why, it’s elemental, my dear Thunder!
This is farce upon farce. The first layer farce is the sendup of Chinese culture, as we’re first introduced to a single Chinese street gang, intent on kidnapping a green eyed Chinese immigrant at the airport, which is swiftly, if confusingly, followed by an encounter with two Chinese street gangs, battling for control of the byways of Chinatown in San Francisco, whose tidy little war is interrupted by the appearance of magical king-fu characters out of myth: Thunder, Lightning, and Rain. Yet, for all their power, they are only minions for the really bad guy here: Lo Pan, an ancient and cursed sorcerer who leads a double existence, one as an ancient man in a wheelchair, barely breathing and cackling in a most demented way, the other as a ghost of a mature man, full of power, but unable to feel anything.
And he’s got hormones. In fact, he must sacrifice a green-eyed wife to the God of the East, Ching Dai, which would be tough on both of them. But there’s a way around this!
Into this mess drops Jack Burton, American truck driver and commentator on life, a man who overdosed one too many times on swagger and sangfroid. While helping buddy Wang Chi pick up his fiancee, green eyed Miao Yin, from the airport, Jack meets Gracie Law, a green-eyed lawyer intent on protecting the civil rights of another immigrant. Into this tableau intrudes the Lords of Death, looking to kidnap a victim for the Chinese slave trade.
From the middle of an airport.
So Miao Yin becomes their victim. The ensuing chase, them in their hot sports car, Jack and Chi in Jack’s monster tractor sans trailer, leads to the happy little street war, interrupted by the aforementioned kung-fu Gods, where Jack and Chi encounter Lo Pan. Jack is up for anything, but even his sangfroid, his swagger, is stressed by kung fu masters who fly around on chunks of lightning.
But Miao Yin, fiancee, marriage. So it’s off they go, with an increasingly unsustainable swagger on Jack’s part. And a second green eyed woman, Gracie Law, possibly to become wife number two, because, after all, evil sorcerers are always bigamists.
Well, we can tell the special effects budget ran short, as one character explodes, just out of sight, and the stage crew is kept busy throwing chunks of cabbage out, rather than special effects innards. The acting is effective, and the plot keeps you guessing, or at least giggling.
The whole thing is silly and depends on the charisma of Jack and, crazily, Egg Shen, a good guy sorcerer not yet mentioned, but its age shows, at least a little bit. Not in terms of racism, but it simply feels like the themes it is exploring are too obscure, too simple.
But it is good if you just need to pass a couple of hours.
