big trouble in little china

“Don’t overestimate me.”

Things are moving fast. Time to talk about the hero of The Ministry of Thunder, the big guy himself, Felice Sabatini.

The official version states that the character of Felice Sabatini came to me after I found out about the Chiang Kai-shek government contracting a squadron of Italian fighter pilots in the 1930s, in a strange dress rehersal of what would be the adventure of Claire Chennault‘s Flying Tigers.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – but it’s only part of the story.

Let’s see… Continue reading →

Big Trouble in Little China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OK, so I said there’s two pulpish adventure movies I’d never get tired of, but actually there’s another one.

Jack Burton: Well, ya see, I’m not saying that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve done everything, but I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on here, and a man would have to be some kind of FOOL to think we’re alone in THIS universe.

Big Trouble in Little China came out in 1986, an unusual forage in the fields of martial arts and wuxia by horror master John Carpenter.
The movie is both a homage to Hong Kong action cinema and to those pulps of old in which Chinatown was sort of a parallel reality made of opium dens, whorehouses, strange shops and warring triads.

In Big Trouble in Little China there is it all.
And then some.
A cartload of pulpy fun, really, and the movie that really started my curiosity about Hong Kong cinema.

The set up – Jack Burton only wants his stolen truck back. But in the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown he’ll meet beautiful women with green eyes, warring gangs, an evil immortal Chinese wizard and his three supernatural bodyguards. Jack and his unlikely allies will have to enter the Cinatown underground, and face even more strangeness*.

Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, Victor Wong as Egg Shen and Kim Cattrall as Gracie Law. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the standards of the 1980s, Big Trouble in Little China is fast – it’s one of the fastest actioneers ever shot, full of plot twists, fights and weirdness.
Carpenter plays his Hong Kong cards well, and Kurt Russel has a great time in the role of down-to-earth Jack.

Big Trouble in Little China is Pulp all the way through, and yet, it allows for some fun twists.
Carpenter switches the roles of hero and sidekick – so that Jack is a big-mouthed poser “whose heart is in the right place, but whose ass isn’t” (in the words of star Russell), while his sidekick Wang Chi is the fearless, competent fighter.
In the same way, the role of leading lady Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) breaks with the standard cliches, short-circuiting the classic hero-gets-the-girl mechanic, while adopting a hawksian comedy style.

There’s a lot of magic, a lot of martial arts, a big hairy monster, and enough wisecracks and quotable dialogue to make everybody happy.
And there’s quite a bit of Chinese history and Taoist magic thrown in, which is very good.

Finally, Big Trouble in Little China develops a wonderful, deep and meaty self-contained universe – the Chinatown of the title could house dozens of great stories, be the site of a score bloody battles, and outside of its borders none would be the wiser.

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* The story was co-authored by W.D. Richter. the script doctor that had directed in 1984 that other great pulp movie, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.
Which I do not rewatch every time I catch it on the telly simply because they never pass it on the telly.
But I’ll write a post about it, sooner or later.