Review of Big Trouble in Little China (1986) by Joshua S — 18 Jan 2010

"a spirit medium channels powers, like the immortals. His bones and flesh become atomized, he becomes a dream.".

"What?".

The latter comment is exactly how I felt about this film. A tongue-in-cheek action film thats as ridiculous as they come. Much like Buckaroo Bonzai (a film possibly even more ludicrous than this one) it makes up its movie not out of a singular narrative but of narratives coming at you from all angles and dimensions. Information and people are thrown at audience at incredible speeds with no slack in the pace. Considering this movie is only an hour and 38 minutes exactly, it is quite a feat.

Characters come out of nowhere and we are forced to comprehend who they are based on the summarization of their own personality from on their dialogue. Kurt Russel "stars" as the lead trucker turned random adventurer when he is seemingly sucked into a different movie during a chinese gang fight which turns into something like an episode of Power Rangers. Throughout the movie you expect him to be this all-consuming all-american all-wisecracking badass, and he is; to an extent. Dennis Dun really comes through in the fights, while Kurt serves as the "ironic hero" as my brother puts it.

Yet for all that should be bad, I love it for. Hilariously absurd but always fun, it makes you wonder just how many different scripts were crammed together to make this nonsensical mess. It became very clear to me early on that this movie was combined from a script about Chinese smugglers and a different script about chinese mystics; hence the illogical inclusion of several unnecessary characters (why does the reporter look exactly like the lawyer?) and poorly transmuted perceptions of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans as irrational and superstitious from the writers (Goldman and Weinstein? Was there even one Chinese person involved with this?).

Despite all these things I felt it was a great example of ridiculous American 80's cinema. Reading back that last sentence only makes me realize that I am, perhaps, an idiot.