B Plus Movies

Movie trivia is a strange comfort for the film buff, not because it lets us know more about the story but because we connect more with business of movie making. Knowing that Viggo Mortensen wasn’t the first pick to play Aragorn (it was Stuart Townsend) doesn’t make the movie better in the telling but it does speak to the actor’s ability and connect us more to the efforts that went into making the Lord of the Rings trilogy so amazing. False trivia, conversely, disconnects from that experience and reminds us that we are but consumers of a product.

For instance, I’ve been mistaken for years that the abandoned script for the propoesed sequel to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, reviewed Wednesday, was cannibalized to make the script for the movie I’m reviewing today, Big Trouble in Little China.

Big Trouble in Little China brings us into the life of Jack Burton, played by Kurt Russel, a loud mouthed truck driver who has friends in Chinatown including Wang Chi (played by Asian character actor Dennis Dun) who is on his way to meet his bride, a Chinese woman with green eyes. Unfortunately, Wang’s would be bride gets kidnapped at the airport by members of a Chinese gang. Jack and Wang (I feel dirty typing that) head down to Chinatown to find her and end up in the middle of a war between rival gangs. This might all be well and good except the battle is joined by three mythical Chinese warriors, the Three Storms in the service of their master, Lo Pan who is a wheelchair bound invalid during business hours but spends more of his time as immortal evil sorcerer (played by another master character actor, James Hong).

Then it gets weird.

We meet Egg Shen (played by Victor Wong), a historian and peasant magician who drives a Tour bus and is the guy who knows what’s going on. Also joining the fight is Gracie Long (played by the still hot Kim Cattrall), a woman looking into the disappearance of Asian girls into prostution rings. Together with the help of one of the gangs of Chinatown, this group must take on Lo Pan, his warriors and demons to keep the sorceror from becoming immortal.

Big Trouble in Little China plays on sterotypes, the unexpected mixed with the expected.  Where a drama would break those stereotypes with insight and displays of humanity, director John Carpenter decided to break those sterotypes with explosions, lightning and the flash of swords. But the thing that makes this movie memorable is Jack Burton, the ugly American.

For the most part, Jack has no idea what’s going on even as he’s trying to overcome the dangers of his situation. In Asian cinema, the viewer is often handed bucketloads of concepts and cleverly named artifacts (Six Demon Bag!) and just expected to accept that these esoteric references are vitally important to the situation. I have no idea if Asian veiwers are any less confused than American ones, but if you’re born in the states and don’t have a degree in Asian Studies, then you probably just look up at the screen and just like Jack Burton go “okay, I can deal with this… whatever this is”.

Because of that aspect of confusion in the midst of action, we connect with Jack and take this fantastic and over the top world at face value, so no matter how strange or twisted the next scene is, the suspension of disbelief stays firmly in place and the time that might be spent with long and complicated plot exposition for the Anglos in the crowd is instead spent shooting things and in general kicking butt.

Big Trouble in Little China is sort of an ubiquitous find in department store $5 bins. I’ve seen in packaged on the same disc with movies that have nothing in common with it except gunfire. I’m not sure if this is a testament to its logevity or a mark against it’s public opinion, but either way it’s easy to find.

If you buy only one obscure, cheap 80’s movie this year, make it this one.  Big Trouble in Little China is fun, confusing, cool and bizarre. It’s a B+ film all the way and perhaps one of the best weird Asian flim with an American main chracter and that wasn’t made in Asia.

Watch it and see if you don’t end up quoting it for a week. I dare you.

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