The flow of the movie
becomes predictable. There’s mechanical dialogue (involving the throwaway
story), villains show up, and Jackie Chan starts to fight. He uses the martial
arts to beat up the entire gang, yes, but he also uses whatever tools and props
are nearby. In “Rumble in the Bronx,” there’s a part where he uses
refrigerators, another one where he improvises with furniture, one where there’s
a perfect timing with a knife and another fight – in a grocery store – where he
does something amazing with a grocery cart.
Jackie Chan is famous
for always doing his own stunts and his fans really wait for the end of his
films, because they know that while the closing credits roll they’ll see
outtakes of the stunts that went wrong. “Rumble in the Bronx” has that at the
end. There’s one scene where Jackie Chan jumps off the top of a building and
lands on a fire escape landing across an alley and two or three floors below.
He broke his ankle there. In the outtakes, we can see ambulances arriving,
blood all over, and lots of laughs as Chan hides a cast under his blue jeans
for the next day’s shooting.
However, it’s not the
stunts themselves that make “Rumble in the Bronx” great. It’s Jackie Chan’s
high spirits and catching personality. Ebert noted, “Here's a Chinese man,
about 40, who resembles nobody so much as Tom Hayden, and whose nose looks as
if it is broken regularly.” He’s enjoyable but not handsome, athletic but not
tall, and his acting in this movie is obligatory. He’s waiting for the action
like everyone else.
He doesn’t see himself
with great seriousness. He gets the joke and he looks to really enjoy himself.
Ebert said, “George C. Scott said a sign of a good actor is his ability to
project "the joy of performance." Chan breathes that joy. There's a
lighthearted air about "Rumble in the Bronx" that's infectious, if
you open yourself up to it.”
This is not a
masterpiece. The movie is just simply silly. It takes place in the Bronx but
was filmed in Vancouver. Ebert said, “Its Bronx has a golf course with
mountains in the background. After scenes that are obviously not set anywhere
near New York, it throws in a canned shot of the Manhattan skyline, as
reassurance.” The story is about Jackie visiting his uncle (Bill Tang), helps
him sell his grocery store, and then makes friends with the young woman (Anita
Mui) who has bought it. This is simply a clothesline for the stunts and action.
There’s accidental
humor in the motorcycle gang that are the villains for the first half of the
movie (before becoming Jackie’s friends against the real villains). Ebert
noted, “They look and talk like "Baywatch" rejects.” In one scene,
they fake an attack on a young woman, played by Francise Yip, simply to get
Jackie in their trap. They give him a real beating. Later, after Jackie has
become friend’s with Yip’s little brother, played by Morgan Lam, who is
wheelchair bound, she admits, “Sometimes we go too far.” Elsewhere, the other
villains think stolen diamonds are hidden in the cushion of the wheelchair,
etc.
Ebert said, “Any
attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile. Don't tell me about
the plot and the dialogue. Don't dwellon the acting. The whole point is Jackie
Chan - and, like Astaire and Rogers, he does what he does better than anybody.
There is a physical confidence, a grace, an elegance to the way he moves.”
There is humor to the choreography of the fights (which are never too violent).
He’s having fun. If we
allow ourselves to enjoy the movie in the correct way, so are we.
This is the movie that
brought Jackie Chan into international stardom. Because of this, Jackie Chan is
popular in the USA. If you haven’t seen this movie and want to see Jackie Chan
in another hilarious movie, this is the one you don’t want to miss. It’s one of
the funniest movies that Jackie Chan has been in. See it for yourself and get a
good laugh.
Stay tuned next week
when I start looking at a trilogy that Jackie Chan stared in the continuation
of “Jackie Chan Month.”
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