Cheese as a food is fantastic. I have mentioned that repeatedly. You can eat it plain, in giant hunks just peeled off of a brick. Put it on crackers for a quick snack. Shred it or melt it and pour it over food. Like broccoli, chicken, chips, cereal and women.

But cheese in movies can be even better. Cheese in movies means over the top action sequences, ridiculous and hilarious one-liners, and even the occasional bouts of unnecessary but very welcome nudity. And most cheesy films are so wildly entertaining that you can’t take your eyes off of them.

The film I re-watched last night, at the behest of a suggestion I received the other day, is one of those such films. So over the top crazy fun that you can’t help but like it.

With that, I give you my review of the movie…

Big Trouble In Little China

First some background…

This film was released in 1986 and stars the immortal Kurt Russell. The film was a box office bust in 1986 but has since become very popular as somewhat of a cult classic through DVD sales, thanks in part to people like me buying it. Directed by John Carpenter, the man responsible for such classics as the original versions of Halloween, The Fog and Assault on Precinct 13, as well as other classics like Escape from New York, Christine and The Thing, this film has all of the required credentials for being a quality hit.

What were those credentials? Kurt + John Carpenter = awesome. End of story.

Sadly, it did not become a huge hit unless you are somebody like me who loves this sort of stuff.

Now…the movie…

Kurt, in all his typical manliness, portrays a truck driver that also enjoys a sharp quip or bad catchphrase as he does anything else. He happens to be making a delivery to Little China and in the process stops to play some game of chance that I really couldn’t determine the rules of. He beats a friend of his rather soundly and wins a tidy sum of money, the majority of which the friend is unable to pay at the moment.

So they journey across town to get the cash and settle up the debt. Cue what seems to be the start of the plot to the film. I think.

But wait…as they are doing so, they first need to stop by the airport and pick up Kurt’s friend’s fiancé. She gets kidnapped, for the moment we do not know why, and now Kurt and pal must find her. So they journey into a dark alley in Kurt’s beastly big rig and stumble across some gang war between two rival groups of Little China ninja-types.

And thus we get our first crazy action sequence in which one group of the ninja-types pulls out automatic weapons and begins to gun down the other group. Hold on a minute…ninjas don’t use guns unless they are part of the G.I. Joe universe. But I’ll give it a pass because the group that gets gunned down regroups and proceeds to kick some major ass. Definitely very fun and cool.

It is at the moment where the formerly beaten down ninjas are laying a swath of human bodies that three fairly imposing sorts descend from the sky. They descend from the sky. FROM THE SKY! How can that not be happy inducing?

And they are wearing some giant wicker hats that make them look a great deal like skinny mushrooms. Each of these guys seem to have some sort of supernatural power that allows them to fly or shoot lightning or other cool things.

It is at this point that I was sold on this film. Descending guys. Wicker hats. Ninjas. Kurt Russell. The spanknormous quotient is pegged right now.

The arrival of these three fellows cause Kurt and his friend to abandon the truck, which will eventually be stolen. So for my money, this entire movie is just about a man trying to get back his stolen truck. He must really love that truck. Because everything else just seems to be superfluous while Kurt tries to track down his missing conveyance. When he is driving his truck, he calls himself the ‘Pork Chop Express.’ Both awesome as a callsign and a little unsettling.

As I was saying, he must really love that truck because along the way they also have to dive into the mystical Chinese underground, fight more ninja-types, the three supernatural guys, a floating eyeball head thing, a 2000-year old sorcerer under a curse and try to rescue the fiancé (who just happens to have green eyes which is somehow important to the plot because the sorcerer needs to marry and then kill her to lift the curse) of Kurt’s friend and a very young and still cute Kim Cattrall is also somehow involved in all of this as well.

So, from what I gathered, the entire film is about trying to rescue the girl with green eyes before the 2000-year old sorcerer type can marry her, kill her and lift his curse. I will still maintain that I think it is just about Kurt trying to get his truck back and everything else is just random background noise.

This movie is littered with faces that you may have seen somewhere but have no idea who they are. Like the guy who played Endo in Lethal Weapon, the guy that tortured Mel Gibson with sponges attached to a car battery while Mel is dangling under a cascade of water and over a tub of that same swishy liquid. Like the guy who played Deep Throat (not the porn film, you pervs) from season one of The X-Files. Like the guy who played the Asian convenience store owner in Tremors. Or the guy who was Cassandra’s father in Wayne’s World 2.

I won’t ruin the ending or give anything else away at this point. Because in all honesty this is a rather large mess of color and noise and at times fairly amusing to try and follow where the story is headed next. Characters show up for no reason, give very little to the plot and basically just take away from screen time for Kurt Russell, which is criminal. Because a film with Kurt Russell should just be him gritting his teeth, dropping one-liners and punching people in the face. That is a hit film right there. I also must say that the ending both sets a precedent for future Hollywood endings and also takes a poo in the face of more convention endings. You’ll just have to watch it to find out what I mean.

In the end, this was a silly, silly film but still a ton of fun. Kurt Russell at times acts like he is channeling his own little internal John Wayne. He chews up the dialogue and spits it out with such fervor that you can’t help but enjoy it.

People are thrown about like rag dolls, walls explode as they fly through them, the hero strips down to his tank top just because he can, automatic weapons (carried by Kurt) seem to have unlimited rounds and the fight scenes are as much a choreographed dance as they are a convoluted mess of bodies flying about. And it was all fantastic.

There are some action sequences, that I kid you not, had to have influenced later more commercially successful films like The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Don’t believe me on that? Watch that last half hour of this film with some of the sword battles and you may actually agree with me.

My final thoughts…

I first saw this film back in junior high with the Moeller boys and we all laughed and cheered at it. And even though the movie does look a bit dated right now and it reeks of the 80s action film clichés at times, I have no problem highly recommending this little bit of celluloid to anybody that likes a good fun time. It is absurd, tongue-in-cheek, unabashedly off the wall and completely lighthearted. And it is an entertaining little bit of fun if you can get past the fashion, hair and lingo of the time.

You want Oscar snobbery nominated films? Watch Brokeback Mountain. Want a hellaciously fun film that you could probably turn into a drinking game? Watch Big Trouble In Little China.

And after watching this film again, I can’t help but wonder what the hell Hollywood executive types were thinking when they actually had the frame of mind that Kurt Russell couldn’t carry an action film by himself in the early 90s. I am thinking of the film Executive Decision where they felt the need to put Steven Seagal on the poster and give him top billing even though his character is in the film for somewhere around ten minutes. For crying out loud, Kurt Russell had already done Escape From New York, Tango and Cash, Backdraft, Tombstone and The Thing at this point. The guy can pull off action. And yet they though he needed a second star to market that film. Morons. But I guess these are the same people that greenlit such epic classics as Battlefield Earth, Freddy Got Fingered and Glitter.

Final rating:

4 Pete’s out of 5.

This is Pete…

Over and out.