Kurt Russell stars as Jack Burton, ostensibly the hero of a battle between ancient factions of Chinatown, roped into action by his gambling buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dunn) to save Wang’s fiancée from the primeval villain David Lo Pan (James Hong). With the help of lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) and sorcerer cum bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong), Jack Burton bumbles his way through adventure, but don’t worry, baby – it’s all in the reflexes.
First of all, I have so many thoughts about Jack Burton, who had the effect on me of presenting himself as the surprise father of about five of my best friends and brother or cousin to at least a dozen more. Before this past weekend, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was my go-to reference when it comes to blundering action comedy, but Jack Burton is truly God’s perfect idiot (Ryan Reynolds, eat your heart out), the first name in action buffoonery. The script does a very clever thing at the beginning when it tells us that Jack Burton is a hero, only for the film proper to reveal that he’s a self-confident figure of swagger and bluster with an empty head and more expository questions than Ellen Page in Inception. It’s inspired casting, then, that Kurt Russell is next to appear as Star-Lord’s father in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, as one could draw a straight line through Jack Burton to Peter Quill.
Jack Burton is a delightful inversion of the “white savior” narrative into which Big Trouble could have easily tripped and fallen, but it’s Jack Burton who does the stumbling, to the delight of this viewer. It reminds me a little of a self-aware Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, turning its gaze inward rather than toward genre films of old. Indy is very much of its time (that is to say, a time gone by), unapologetically throwing back, but Big Trouble is re-visionist in a different way, imagining what Temple of Doom would be like if Indy were wholly out of his element, with neither his whip nor his wits about him – just a plucky can-do attitude and a belief in a cause, even if it’s a world he doesn’t fully understand.
I’m not a big kung-fu/karate movie aficionado – Kill Bill is about the closest I get – but kudos to Big Trouble for tricking me into watching a martial arts movie and then enjoying it. Of director John Carpenter’s work, I’d really only seen Halloween before, but Big Trouble demonstrates he’s as deft with action and comedy as he was with suspense and horror. (I still remember fondly the moment Halloween unironically elicited the cliché, “Oh, no, he’s right behind you!” from me.) After seeing firsthand how versatile Carpenter is, you’ll be seeing more of him around these “How’d He Miss That?!” parts.
At a smidgen more than 90 minutes, Big Trouble is brisk and breezy, with levity that never forgets to let the audience in on the joke. It’s a film that steadfastly refuses to take itself too seriously, and it left me wanting so much more even though the script smartly admits that there’s really nothing more for Jack Burton to do here. I’m exceedingly curious about the recent comic book sequel, to which Carpenter has been contributing, because Big Trouble is the kind of film that introduces you to a bunch of fascinating people you’d like to continue seeing. For one, what’s ahead for Jack Burton and Gracie Law, a Howard Hawks couple by way of the Coen Brothers? And is the kind of movie magic that, like lightning, never strikes the same place twice?
Big Trouble in Little China is big fun, smartly directed and cleverly scripted. I can’t quite say how I missed it, but I’m glad to have caught up with it when I was ready for it.
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