Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

 Big Trouble in Little China (1986)


John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China is a campy thrill ride that is bound to please fans of genre B-filmmaking. Yeah, it is not the greatest film of all time, but it is an hour-and-a-half romp with cool king fu moves, an interesting mythical background story, and a wisecracking Kurt Russell. The visual effects and stuntwork are excellent and well-choreographed. The story itself is interesting enough to hold my attention as I love all things fantasy and mysticism, but it could have been better developed. In other words, this is your quintessential summer blockbuster action movie.

 

Preproduction did not get off to the best start. The original draft of the screenplay was written by first-time screenplay writers Gary Goldman and David Weinstein. Their draft was considered so bad that it was unreadable despite having interesting ideas. 20th Century Fox hired veteran script doctor W.D Richter to overhaul the script. The original writers got into a tussle with the studio over credit and the WGA needed to get involved. One thing for sure is that the screenplay is not the film’s best attribute. Although it does deliver some really memorable lines of dialogue.

 

John Carpenter was hired to direct the movie because of his ability to work quickly. There was a similar movie being released the same year starring Eddie Murphy, so time was of essence. Carpenter had success working in big-budget, special-effects driven movies such as The Thing and Escape from New York. His previous feature Starman was a beautiful drama, so I was ready to see what’s next from him. Although Carpenter is proud of the final result, he became an independent filmmaker because he could not take working with the Hollywood system no more. He did not have a good time making the movie under the pressure of the Hollywood studio. I felt that small cracks could be seen, and his use of special effects threaten to overshadow the movie, but I believe Carpenter did a good job. As with most of his films, he created the score. He did away with the chop suey score one would expect and instead created a fusion of traditional synth and rock’n’roll, which I believe was an excellent choice!

 

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is a truck driver who just arrived in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He meets his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and they head to the airport to pick up Wang’s new fiancé, Miao Yin. Miao has green eyes, which is rare for a Chinese person and is important to the overall story. At the airport, she is kidnapped by a street gang. They learn that this gang is associated with David Lo Pan (James Hong), an evil sorcerer who is under a two-thousand-year-old curse. He needs to marry a woman with green eyes to break the curse. They team up with lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), a lawyer with green eyes herself. They head underground to fight magic.

 

Kurt Russell was considered a rising star and Carpenter quickly casted him in the lead role. His character is a mixture of John Wayne and Indiana Jones. I like how he is really confident in his abilities to be a hero when all he really is the bumbling sidekick. His friend, the guy with the awesome martial art skills, is the real hero. I found many of Russell’s lines and his delivery to be amusing in his cocky sort of way. He ain’t no Indiana Jones, but I guess it does not hurt to try.

 

Big Trouble in Little China is a fun cult classic. It bombed at the box office when it was released mainly because it was released in the shadow of Aliens. Plus, the cast was mainly all Asian outside of Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall. Still, it’s a solid movie with an interesting story. The fighting sequences are worth watching and I liked the twist regarding Russell’s status as a hero. Most of the movie is one giant chase sequence after the first ten minutes so be prepared for that. It is an effects-heavy movie so be prepared for some story to be sacrificed. Being a John Carpenter film, I still found it worthy of his name.

 

My Grade: B

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