This is one of the wildest stories ever: a cartoon come to life and a mixture of an old-time serial with modern special-effects with bold colors all the way through.
This movie is pure tongue-in-cheek. One just has to take nothing seriously in here and just go along on the wild ride. From the nonsense mystical Chinese sorcery that is taken so reverently, to the American hero "Jack Burton" (Kurt Russell) who displays the fearless macho man, to combatants flying through the air (this was 15 years before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed), to one exotic character and situation after another - it's all absurd fun.
Russell plays his role to the hilt, playing his favorite kind of role when he was younger: brash, bold and an ignoramus who fears absolutely nothing. His lines are deliberately corny and one can bet he had a lot of fun making this movie. He even gets in a few good comedic lines. His partner, Dennis Dunn, is a likable guy with a devilish grin on his face and Kim Cattrell plays the more modern damsel-in-distress role to the hilt, too.
They could have lightened this up a bit on the action - it gets to be too much at times - but the movie is just slightly over an hour-and-half. It still wore me out the first few times I saw it.
All in all: ludicrous fun, a kind of Indiana Jones in Chinatown adventure flick.
This movie is pure tongue-in-cheek. One just has to take nothing seriously in here and just go along on the wild ride. From the nonsense mystical Chinese sorcery that is taken so reverently, to the American hero "Jack Burton" (Kurt Russell) who displays the fearless macho man, to combatants flying through the air (this was 15 years before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed), to one exotic character and situation after another - it's all absurd fun.
Russell plays his role to the hilt, playing his favorite kind of role when he was younger: brash, bold and an ignoramus who fears absolutely nothing. His lines are deliberately corny and one can bet he had a lot of fun making this movie. He even gets in a few good comedic lines. His partner, Dennis Dunn, is a likable guy with a devilish grin on his face and Kim Cattrell plays the more modern damsel-in-distress role to the hilt, too.
They could have lightened this up a bit on the action - it gets to be too much at times - but the movie is just slightly over an hour-and-half. It still wore me out the first few times I saw it.
All in all: ludicrous fun, a kind of Indiana Jones in Chinatown adventure flick.