Review: Thunderbolt

Jackie Chan plays a mechanic, occasional race car driver and reluctant snitch for the police on illegal street racers. Mostly, though, he’s a humble family man, and it’s his beloved family that become the target of villainous German crim and illegal street racer Thorsten Nickel. He kidnaps Chan’s sisters and forces him to compete in a grand prix race in Japan (!) in order to win his family back.

 

The story goes that Jackie Chan injured his leg during the filming of “Rumble in the Bronx”, and thus used doubles for most of his fights/stunts in this 1995 film from director Gordon Chan (Jet Li’s “Fist of Legend”, Chan’s “The Medallion”) and his co-writers Hing-Ka Chan and Wai Chung Kwok. I don’t know if Jackie was contractually obligated to do this film already when he sustained the injury, but if not, he shouldn’t have bothered. Not only is this an entirely tedious, lousy excuse for an action film, but since the highlight of Jackie’s films are the usually crazy stunts/fights, and he’s not actually doing most of the work himself…the film is actually kinda worthless to be honest. The fact that Jackie doesn’t dub his own voice in the English version of the film (Even in scenes where he was clearly speaking English on set!), coupled with the direct-to-DVD release outside of China only add to the sense that this film wasn’t necessary, isn’t much good, and no one involved seems to care all that much. Certainly the screenwriters didn’t seem to care enough to make their ridiculous plot make much sense (Just read the plot synopsis again and try not to roll your eyes at it. Why is the bad guy doing what he is doing? Who knows?!).

 

I really don’t know what the thought process behind having Jackie Chan star in something like this was. Sure, the film contains some martial arts, but the last twenty minutes in particular is almost exclusively focussed on car racing. Although pretty well-photographed (by the whopping six credited DOPs!) and attractive, it’s completely unengaging and bloody ridiculously over-the-top. That’s mostly because the tedium that precedes it ended up completely disengaging me from the film. You certainly can’t get into the fights (which are just OK at best anyway), you’ll be too busy noticing all of the close-ups that don’t show Jackie’s face…because he’s not the one doing most of the work. You’re kept at a frustrating distance, especially when you can see that the stunt double has a different haircut. In one scene, Chan smashes a bunch of pachinko machines. For some reason. Feel free to email me if you can work it out. For a guy who is a martial artist by way of slapstick comedian, the setting and his injury really do hamper Chan, rendering him useless in this film. He does sing the opening song, though and it’s a truly fucking terrible 80s canto-pop attempt at a “Rocky”-esque inspirational song ala ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or ‘You’re the Best Around’, but pop-ier. Speaking of all things 80s, the whole film looks and plays like it came from 1985, not 1995. It’s bizarrely retro-looking, and not in a fun way. It looks cheap and horribly dated. At least with “The Accidental Spy” (review forthcoming…sometime…I promise!) you could blame a lot of the problems on a re-cut version of the film that completely changed the storyline and tone. Here, though, the fights aren’t the only problem so you can’t chalk everything up to Chan’s injury.

 

The film is nicely bloody at times, but mostly just bloody boring. Even car enthusiasts will likely have a hard time staying awake in this one. It’s all played so glumly and seriously, and Chan himself gives a boring, non-committed performance throughout. In no way is he used to his best advantage here. It’s no fun, and lethargically paced for added irony. If you skip one Jackie Chan film, well skip three; “The Protector”, “City Hunter”, and this silly tedium.

 

Rating: D+