Empire List # 430: Big Trouble in Little China

Among the great partnerships between actors and directors you can count Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, John Wayne and John Ford, and my personal favourite, Kurt Russell and John Carpenter. Together they made an Elvis Pressley biography, a horror movie (“The Thing”), and a post-apocalyptic action movie (“Escape from New York”). With “Big Trouble in Little China” (1986) they tried a mash-up of three genres: comedy, martial arts, and action. The result is a blend of Chinese legends, monsters, kung fu fighting, and Kurt Russell trading quips with Kim Cattrall in the San Francisco underworld. Man, movies were crazy in the 80s.

I saw this particular genre mix back in 2009 while spending the summer in Vancouver as a summer student. Wonderful beaches, but since I only had three courses and didn’t know a lot of people in town I had a lot of free evenings. Always count on iTunes to have a large variety of titles at low prices if you want some home entertainment. Rather appropriate, since the movie was a cult hit on video. It’s the second chance medium for movies like that. First they burn at the box-office, then they’re brought back to life on home video and eventually someone is making a festival based on that one movie. Although given the crazy stuff that happen in Carpenter films, I don’t expect to see a “Big Trouble…” festival anytime soon.

The plot is so bizarre that the best way to approach it is through the eyes of Kurt Russell’s character. He plays Jack Burton, a fast-talking trucker who rolls into San Francisco’s Chinatown looking for a little fun with his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun). They go to the airport to pick up Wang’s fiancée Mio Yin (Suzee Pai) only for her to be kidnapped by a Chinese street gang. Jack and Wang chase them to Chinatown and are caught up in a fight between two ancient feuding societies who have mystical powers.

Their fight brings face-to-face with Lo Pan (James Hong) a 2000 year sorcerer who intends to use Mio Yin to…actually, I am not a 100% sure what he intends to do with her. I lost track of the plot when the guys who look Mortal Kombat characters showed up in the streets shooting lighting out of their eyes. Suffice it to say that Lo Pan is the villain and he has evil intentions towards the damsel in distress. Jack Burton will help his Chinese friends take him down because he has a hero complex and also because they stole his truck. What’s a hero without his ride?

Also, what is a hero without a leading lady? Kim Cattrall plays lawyer Gracie Law (not the most subtle name for a lawyer) who helps the citizens of Chinatown against the local crime lords. Unlike Jack, she actually knows a thing or two about the local culture so she joins in on the adventure. She is the brain between the two of them whereas Jack just likes to shoot, throw knives, punch and ask questions later.

What stands out about Russell’s character is the fact the he isn’t really the hero. If anything, he’s the sidekick. He’s just a truck driver, not some invincible special ops warrior on leave from a war. When he tries to fire a gun half the time he misses. Once he even shoots the ceiling and is knocked out by falling debris. Dennis Dun and the rest of the mostly Asian cast are all martial arts fighters who could probably beat him to a pulp if they had to.

Yet Kurt Russell is one of the reasons why the movie works. Well it didn’t work, it bombed at the box-office when it first came out, but like most of Carpenter’s movies it found new life on video. I guess over time people rediscovered this crazy movie featuring a thousand-year-old villain, exploding henchmen, and Kurt Russell firing one-liners like Bruce Campbell in “Evil Dead II.” Sometimes a concept is so crazy it can’t work on the big screen, but over time you can enjoy with a bag of chips and an ice-cold beer. It doesn’t hurt to be buzzed to have a good time at the movies.

The plot may be ludicrous, the special effects are admittedly sub-par by today’s standards, by “Big Trouble in Little China” survives by being a truck-load of fun with Kurt Russell at the wheel and John Carpenter giving him directions.

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Sometimes in a detective story the mystery is not half as fun as the detective stuck in the chaos of the story. Philip Marlow is one of those detectives. His name is synonymous with Hollywood noir and in The Long Goodbye (1973), he dives deep into a mystery involving a murder, then a suicide, then a missing person, and eventually a very violent gangster operating in sunny Los Angeles. One thing I love about this version is that this detective loves his cat enough to go buy him food at three o’clock in the morning. Now that is a dedicated pet lover. The late great director Robert Altman starts the action at a slow pace to introduce Marlowe (Eliott Gould) as he wakes up to his hungry cat. Here is a man who falls asleep in his clothes, always the same suit and tie, and is either constantly smoking or lighting a new cigarette. He is a friendly person, nice enough to pick up an item for his neighbours while going out to get cat food. It probably helps that said neighbours are five y...

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Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. You have some good times in a period of your life, time goes by and you feel like going back to that time period. I am guessing someone in the late 70s felt nostalgic about late 1950s high school life in America, leading to the creation of “Grease,” one of John Travolta’s first hits. The life and time are very dated today, but every now and then you still hear the soundtrack on classic rock stations. Clearly the lyricists did their jobs right. This is not my favourite musical. It’s cutesy with catchy tunes, but my top two musicals are “The Blues Brothers” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” If it involves car chases, Ray Charles, the Time Warp, Meat Loaf, and Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher then count me in. I have less enthusiasm for Danny Zucko singing about his summer love for Sandy. But the movie was available for a dollar on iTunes during an evening when I had nothing to do in University, so I might as well kill two hours and ...

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