a wise man knows when to get in out of the rain [movies]

big trouble in little china

its all in the reflexes.

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it's a dark and stormy night here in san francisco (well, technically it's the middle of the afternoon, but that's just semantics at this point). it's been raining heavily over the last week, streets flooding, power dying, cars crashing left and right. to put it plainly, it's a madhouse out there and it got me thinking - what would ol' jack burton do at a time like this? when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of heaven shake...what would he say?

john carpenter has unleashed many brilliant creations on the world, from his masterful reinvisioning of the thing to the gritty, futuristic dystopian escape from new york to the ever-so-slept on, but amazingly strange prince of darkness. few, however, can hold a candle to the profoundly hilarious and ingeniously zany big trouble in little china. let's just establish this right now before we go any further - kurt russell is a fuckin' genius. no ifs, ands or buts about it - just. plain. genius. if you don't agree, you're either a total poser that's never seen any of his movies or some stupid whore that's probably obsessed with matthew mcconaughey or something. regardless, your opinion means nothing.

i often find myself watching movies and thinking "this would have worked so much better if kurt russell was playing that guy". for instance, we all remember that flaming heap transformers, right? now, there really wasn't anything short of a global outbreak of alzheimer's that was going to save that rag, but just imagine if the part played so awkwardly by john turturro was instead played by kurt russell. eeeeehhhh? see what i'm sayin'? not good, but still much better, right? i don't know what it is about him, but his mere presence can elevate a movie above mediocrity. i don't know where he learned those acting chops, but my hunch is that it must have been from jesus himself. i know i'm hamming it up a bit, but i'm not being sarcastic. watch 'big trouble' again and try to imagine anyone else being able to pull that role off. imagine if dolf lundgren played jack burton. or bruce willis. sly stallone. arnold. these hot shots think they're holywood royalty, but are they worthy to even lick the ground kurt russell walks on? imagine tom cruise's sissy ass saying "son of a bitch must pay". you can't because it's just totally wrong. he'd say it all ratty-like, as if someone had just befouled the holy name of xenu. not only that, he probably would have looked like an idiot in those acid washed jeans.

anyway, i'm getting a little off track here. i'm supposed to be talking about one of my favorite movies of all time, so i should get to it. a lot of people just don't quite get 'big trouble in little china'. i can't blame them - it's weird and goofy and you're never quite sure if what you're watching is real or if you fell asleep halfway through the movie and your imagination concocted some outrageous, totally implausable dream world where every word out of every character's lips endlessly tickles your funny bone for no clear reason and the alleys of chinatown are magically big enough to drive semi trucks through. it's a damn weird movie and i get the feeling that the average joe just has no idea how he's supposed to process it. "wait a second...is this for real?", "is this movie really racist?", "why is he talking like that?", "did they really wear boots like that in the 80s?".

not me though, i get it. i get every single line, every single subtle detail to the point where i probably laugh at things that aren't even jokes just because i get this damn movie so much. it's one of those films that gets it right in every way possible. the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the gags work, but not so much that it becomes a spoof. obviously it's a parody of those old charlie chan type movies, but carpenter handles it in such an interesting and comical way that it's not offensive or racially insensitive. jack burton is the perfect clueless action movie oaf that simultaneously thinks the world of himself and is delightfully surprised whenever he's actually able to back up all his big talk. not to mention kim cattrall's criminally overlooked performance as gracie law, a young, conscientious civil rights lawyer that has a serious problem with her face.

the thing i love most about 'big trouble in little china' is the way it comments on how american society is still incredibly racist, ignorant and biased toward other cultures, whether they know it or not. anything more than a passing glance at the film reveals that while kurt russell's name is first and foremost on the credits, jack burton is far from the hero of the story. in fact, the film flips the tables in a really interesting way. wang chi, played to hilarious effect by dennis dun is the true hero in 'big trouble' and jack is his witless sidekick who is just tagging along to cash in on a bet. jack, who is a big man in his own little pool of truck-drivin' CV radio personalities, is of little or no consequence to the inhabitants of san francisco's chinatown. the "weirdness" of their culture persists and amplifies only because of his ignorance toward it. carpenter derives comedy from the sheer ridiculousness of the film's portrayal of chinese-american life and how little the average american actually knows about the culture. but, in pointing out this dilemma, 'big trouble' is also bittersweet, for it calls into focus the bias' of hollywood as a whole. dennis dun, donald li and victor wong all gave great performances in this film as well as carpenter's 'prince of darkness' and should by all accounts have gone on to at least have decent careers on the c-list, but what became of them? not a whole lot. it's painful to me to see the great things that can happen when hollywood isn't culturally backwards, only to be pulled violently back to the reality of the situation - these great actors are going to forever be relegated to playing nameless henchmen in the background of movies that have something vaguely to do with asians. the world may yet remember the immortal advice of jack burton on matters of importance such as how to conduct yourself when accosted by a grabby thug or how to respond when your old lady is on your case about driving too fast, but will they remember even a line of what egg shen said?