Like I say, it must have seemed like a great idea. And the first 30 minutes of the movie gave me lots of room for hope. It was fast-moving, it was visually spectacular, it was exotic and lighthearted and filled with a spirit of adventure. But then, gradually, the movie began to recycle itself. It began to feel as if I was seeing the same thing more than once. After one amazing subterranean chamber had been survived and conquered, everybody fell down a chute into another one. By the end of the movie, I was just plain weary.
"Big Trouble in Little China" was directed by John Carpenter, who has specialized in special-effects movies. He made "The Thing" (1982), "Escape From New York" and "Christine," but his best movie in recent years has been "Starman," the one with Jeff Bridges as the outer-space alien learning to be a human being. "Starman" was so good because it told a story that involved interesting characters. Special effects all by themselves aren't enough.
"Little China" doesn't seem to remember that. The movie stars Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a truck-driving adventurer in the Indiana Jones mode. He goes to the airport with his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), and while they're greeting a flight from China, Wang's girlfriend (Suzee Pai) is abducted by bandits from Chinatown.
That sets up the rest of the movie, which is essentially one extended chase scene, as Russell, Dun and Kim Cattrall plunge headlong into the mysteries beneath Chinatown. The key to the abduction is the fact that Wang's girlfriend has green eyes, rare for a Chinese woman, but invaluable for the dreaded Lo Pan (James Hong), an incredibly ancient sorcerer who must draw on the power within those green eyes to restore his youth. Because Cattrall also has green eyes, it is obviously only a matter of time before Pai and Cattrall are both captives in the dragon's lair.
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