Review: Meltdown

Cop Jet Li’s family are killed in a bomb on a bus planted by a terrorist called the Doctor (Kelvin Wong, dubbed here to sound like John Lithgow doing a really bad Tim Curry impersonation), and two years later he’s stunt man for lily-livered slapstick-y movie star Jacky Cheung (essentially playing...well, you work it out). But when a black-tie shindig the duo attend is interrupted by Wong and his terrorist goons (who plan on stealing priceless jewels located in the same hotel that the party is being held), it’s up to Li to get back into badass cop mode and save the day. Caught in all of this is an annoying reporter played by the sexy Chingmy Yau.

 

Also known as “High Risk”, this is a badly dubbed 1995 film mixes “The Hard Way” and “Die Hard”, but with some martial arts thrown in between the gunfire, crashing helicopters and explosions. It comes directed by Wong Jing, the prolific scriptwriter of the excellent “The Seventh Curse”, writer-director of the entertaining “The Last Blood” and the godawful Jackie Chan film “City Hunter”. Chan’s badmouthing of that latter film, and refusal to appear in this one, allegedly inspired the director’s vicious lampooning of the star here, and star Jet Li’s subsequent personal apology to Chan for carrying out Jing’s venomous mockery. Jet Li is nonetheless good, Valerie Chow is fine, and there is some fine action – loved that helicopter bit in particular. However, the whole thing comes across as absurd. It’s not just the dubbing, Cheung’s mugging makes Jackie Chan look subtle and don’t even get me started on the bit with the snakes... It’s also poorly written, derivative, and cheap. Still, it’s not every film that blows up a busload of kiddies in the opening scene!

 

For the really, really undemanding action fan only, even the schlocky director has done better. Screenplay by the director, if this indeed was all meant as a big ‘Fuck You!’ to Jackie Chan, it’s somewhat harsh, and Li didn’t deserve to be a (presumed) unwitting participant. But all’s well that ends well, Li and Chan appeared together in the 2007 juvenile martial-arts fantasy “The Forbidden Kingdom”, a much better film than this.

 

Rating: C

 

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