Big Trouble in Little China

A timeless reminder of the era when blockbusters were spectacular in a carnivalesque kind of way and didn’t conceal their essence behind an attempt to be multi-faceted. Furthermore, Carpenter’s classic is a fascinating project that attempted to bring into the American mainstream the genre of Hong Kong fantasy flicks, which was revitalised there by Tsui Hark in the 1980s. Carpenter superbly captured those films’ carnivalesque exuberance and identically packed his film with practical special effects, physical action, horror elements and slapstick humour. In doing so, he concurrently subverts and boisterously comments on the classic image of the macho American cinematic hero by presenting Jack Burton, with all his pomposity and coolness, as a purely chaotic element that complicates rather than saves any situation. (14/03/2021)

The stupidest of the stupid, which I think is most damaging in how stubbornly it tries to be funny. I admit that in the original version with subtitles, it's probably a bit more fun, but if John Carpenter wanted to make something like Flash Gordon, but unlike Flash Gordon it wouldn't take itself at all seriously, and that is what made it good, then the result wasn't great. It's not that Big Trouble in Little China doesn't have the right trashy charm - it certainly does, but it just left me cold. I guess it's also because I only saw it for the first time today and not in my childhood. (08/11/2015)

Had I read the synopsis beforehand, I would have passed on this B-movie. Carpenter couldn’t have deviated further from his dark and horror beginnings, and here he delivers insane straightforward fantasy with a concept reminiscent of the Ninja Turtle comics and a protagonist that casually drops one-liners and complements his heroic acts with self-parody stumbles. But Kurt Russell is really enjoying that role and you can’t deny the guilty pleasure quality, thanks to which the story manages to surprise and never gets boring. But I liked Escape from New York a lot more. 55% (21/01/2020)

This John Carpenter's non-stop action and entertaining crazy comedy features a witty Kurt Russell, who sneaks into the underground of San Francisco’s Chinatown in order to save his buddy’s fiancée and get his stolen truck back. Nothing’s missing – the magic, the kung fu, the constant shooting and the exploding heads. One shouldn’t take Big Trouble in Little China seriously for even a second; it’s basically a fantastic series of gags best enjoyed as a midnight screening. I’m glad I was able to see it on the big screen. [KVIFF 2018] (08/07/2018)

The pinnacle of an 80s boy adventure with the mentality of an eight to ten year old, best summed up by the dialogue in which Jack Burton incredulously tries to convince his partners that he's not going back to the Chinatown underworld for a woman after all, but for his car. The rest of the film is a reinterpretation of an old-school video game dungeon in movie form. A barred window from a side alley leads to a dingy basement, from which you crawl through skylights into a forgotten warehouse. From there, the elevator only goes down, where there's a medieval torture chamber, centuries-old sewers, pimp cages, a giant temple, and all sorts of shafts of shafts, pipes, and secret passages in between. Anyone who has played the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks will be right at home in no time. Plus, Russell really rules here as a parody of the 80s macho, who, while he has the same kind of cocky mindset as other protagonists of that type, is nonetheless pretty incompetent throughout, taking himself out of the fight several times. I burst out laughing all the more during the scene where he takes out the main bad guy. Partly because of how ruthlessly quick the editing in this scene is. I see a lot of people here writing that they used to get a lot of mileage out of it when they were young and now they're ashamed of it or something. I screamed in horror when I noticed that I had given it a mere three stars here some years ago with some heated commentary like a jaded film critic. Corrected. Je suis Jack Burton. (29/09/2020)

I knew why I was letting this film sit and wait. John Carpenter completely got me with his approach to it. Kurt Russell is just a real badass in his movies, and it suits him perfectly in this film. He was just right for this, and maybe he still is. But the best thing about the film is its form, its concept. This is a great example of action imagination. (07/10/2016)

John Carpenter's wacky homage to Hong Kong martial-arts fantasy films (especially Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain) is on the one hand full of Asian stereotypes, but on the other hand humorously subverts the stereotypes associated with Hollywood action movies. The roles of the action hero and his sidekick are reversed here. The film is told from the point of view of Jack Burton, who outwardly appears to be an action hero but is really just a blowhard who is merely playing at being an action hero. The real action hero is actually Wang Chi, who in turn outwardly acts as Burton's sidekick. Wang Chi is the one who makes all the decisions and does all the work, while Burton, who most of the time has absolutely no idea what's going on around him, takes credit for everything and only manages to win because of his own stupidity (he survives the final fight because he accidentally knocks himself out). Carpenter crammed what he could from the subgenre: wire-fu fights, lightning fighters, ghosts, monsters, demons, Chinese magic... Audiences at the time were probably not ready for such things and the film flopped, but later it gained recognition on video (as is usual with Carpenter's films). (30/05/2013)