Big Trouble in Little China
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
John Carpenter's 1986 action thriller/Kung Fu/Western comedy is so jam packed with big budget thrills and special effects surrounding Kurt Russell that it should be an absolute blast of fun.
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA has been a film I've wanted to love since I saw it on the big screen in 1986, but it's always squandered my goodwill in a confusing mess of baffling storytelling and sheer noise. Decades haven't made it any clearer, but Russell's performance has aged well. His Jack Burton, a trucker that's an interesting blend of John Wayne and Indiana Jones, is constantly hilarious in his jingoistic spouting ineptitude. He doesn't believe in ghosts,magic or any of that supernatural mumbo-jumbo.
Burton and his best buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dugan) head to the airport to pick up Chi's girlfriend arriving from China, Miao (the stunning Suzee Pai from "Sharky's Machine"). When she is kidnapped right in front of them by a large gang of Asian bad guys, the adventure is off and running.
Gracie (Kim Cattrall) also witnesses the crime and is pulled into the pursuit.
It turns out that the gang has stolen Miao due to her rare green eyes, that are key to the power of a 2000 year old sorcerer named Lo Pan, played by legendary actor James Hong (Blade Runner, The Sand Pebbles).
It seems Lo Pan needs to steal the lifeforce of a beautiful woman with green eyes to grow young again, which is bad news for Cattrall too, sporting green contacts for her role. Why suck the life out of one girl, when two fall into your lap, right Lo Pan?
Victor Wong (The Last Emperor, Prince of Darkness) is a lot of fun as Egg Shen, our guide through the mythos of Carpenter's world and the subterranean lair.
Carpenter has created so many of my favorite films of the 70's, 80's including "Halloween", "The Fog", "Escape from New York" and my all-time Carpenter fave, "The Thing". He was one of the first horror/thriller directors to embrace new technology and his "Thing" was an absolute triumph of practical effects that still perfectly disturbs today.
Here, he's crafted an adventure that pays tribute to everything from Charlie Chan to the 70's Kung Fu movie craze. He also leans in hard on early digital visual effects as supernatural bad guys float in on lightning bolts, busting holes in the roof to float in. The Three Storms, with their blue lightning courtesy of special effects wiz Richard Edlund (Star Wars) and wide giant hats are a lot of fun and you will never convince me that they didn't inspire characters in Mortal Kombat the following decade.
For the first 30 minutes of so, I'm always all in. It's fun, exciting and hilarious.
Martial arts coordinator James Lew (Inception, Avengers: Endgame) stages some terrific battles, conjuring up plenty of mid-air battles long before "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" made them fashionable for mainstream Hollywood.
Carpenter also creates an entire world of sorcery and mystical action underneath San Francisco's Chinatown, a web of underground caverns and massive rooms where the action takes place. But after that first 30 minutes, the action gets very repetitive and the story gets so damn confusing that I defy anyone to tell me what the hell is going on.
Without a clear storyline, you're left with endless action that seems to go in circles.
Russell is the standout as Burton, a hero so clumsy and dumb that he actually knocks himself out right before the biggest battle of the film. He creates a voice for Burton that sounds like John Wayne and Colonel Sanders on downers.
Dugan is superb at the martial arts action, but he's a horrible actor, screaming every line of dialogue at a fever pitch, just as he did in Carpenter's next film, "Prince of Darkness" a guilty pleasure that's absolutely mad.
By the time a flying eyeball with 30 separate eyes on it and some half-assed sewer bigfoot entered the action, I was exhausted trying to figure out what I was watching. So were audiences, as bad word of mouth killed this one quickly, earning just $11 million against its $25 million production budget.
It's found a solid measure of cult status in the 40 years since it's release, and I still love Russell's hilarious take on Burton. Carpenter wrote his own music score too and it's terrific, filling almost every scene with 80's synth and a driving beat.
Still too loud, too confusing and too overstuffed of a film to be truly enjoyable for me, BIG TROUBLE gets only a little love, earning a C.
To quote Jack: "May the wings of liberty never lose a feather!"
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