Green Eyed Lady.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986): 9 out of 10 follows Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), a loud-mouthed, swaggering truck driver, as he gets pulled into a bizarre and dangerous underworld battle beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Jack and his friend, Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), head to the airport to pick up Wang’s green-eyed fiancée, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai). However, she’s kidnapped by a color coordinated street gang because she has green eyes.
Jack, convinced he’s a tough guy but actually quite inept, follows Wang into the hidden depths of Chinatown, where they encounter a fantastical world of magic, monsters, and martial arts.
They team up with Egg Shen (Victor Wong), a wise and eccentric bus driver and sorcerer, and another green eyed woman (Kim Cattrall). Green-eyed women are a bit like buses in Big Trouble in Little China. You wait a thousand years for one and two show up at the same time.
The Good
The Good: Honestly, you had me at Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall. I love Kim Cattrall. For my younger readers; she is the eighties version of Natalie Dormer. Kurt Russell is downright brilliant in this. It is a surprisingly comic performance. He is all bravado with a lot of luck and minimal actual skills. It is a fresh relief from the indestructible action heroes of both the eighties and today.
The set design is also fantastic in Big Trouble in Little China. The scenes are clearly filmed on a back lot but it is dressed within an inch of its life. I love that the bad guys’ lair has both neon accents and an escalator. Hell, there is even a sewer level.
There are a lot of strange asides (People are constantly taking elevators) and bizarre features. You know that boring scene at the end of the Marvel movie where the good guys’ laser light fights the bad guys’ laser light? That is in Big Trouble in Little China. I was prepared for a yawner, so imagine my delight when the lasers turned into neon Samurai battling each other.
The supporting cast is familiar and excellent, with Carter Wong being a particular standout. And then there are stop motion monsters coming out of nowhere in the third act, giant street battles between gangs, and did I mention there is an escalator?
Seriously top bad guy James Hong comes down the escalator for the ultimate battle like he was running for president in 2016.
Big Trouble in Little China is a very eighties film in all the right ways.
The Bad
The Bad: Kate Burton as journalist Margo is not awful. But good lord, she is unnecessary. She adds nothing to the movie and takes up a surprising amount of running time, adding nothing.
The Ugly
The Ugly: You know they say they don’t make them like they used to, and Big Trouble in Little China is a classic example of this. But there have been “spiritual” sequels to the film in a way.
One of my first thoughts while watching Big Trouble in Little China was, “hey those are the guys from Mortal Kombat.” And per IMDb “The Three Storms were partly the inspiration for the popular character of lightning god Raiden from Mortal Kombat fighting video game series, while David Lo Pan was the inspiration for the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung.”
So how did the makers of the latest Mortal Kombat movie not watch Big Trouble in Little China and think to themselves we should do that instead of the train wreck that was Mortal Kombat (2021)?
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Again you had me at Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall. Big Trouble in Little China is a very eighties film in all the right ways. It never fails to surprise and delight throughout its entire running time. Creativity never seems to take its foot off the accelerator. A joy to watch.
