Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein, adapted by W. D. Richter
Stars: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong and Victor Wong

Index: Make It a Double.

James Hong’s Double took me from a movie I’ve reviewed before to a movie I can’t believe I haven’t reviewed before. Nowadays, my go to films from John Carpenter have changed from Halloween and Escape from New York to They Live and Big Trouble in Little China, two movies that I enjoy more and more with every viewing.

This was Carpenter’s Hollywood flop, which cost $20m or so to produce but only took half that at the box office. There are probably a lot of reasons for that but one is that the audience really didn’t understand what it was in 1986.

What they probably expected was an action movie full of Chinese weirdness but without a real understanding of what Chinese weirdness actually looks like. It would happen in the U.S. and Kurt Russell would be the action hero who would take care of it all.

They certainly got Chinese weirdness and it certainly takes place in the U.S., in and under San Francisco’s Chinatown. However, Russell’s character, a trucker called Jack Burton, merely believes that he’s the action hero. He’s really a comic relief sidekick to Wang Chi, his Chinese American friend, played by Dennis Dun.

While moviegoers may or may not have got into the Chinese weirdness, sparked by writer Gary Goldman’s discovery of a new generation of Hong Kong supernatural fantasy movies like Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, they didn’t get Jack Burton. Kurt Russell was the big name in the picture, credited first as the star of the movie tends to be. He also gets the great lines, so ends up more quotable than either of his prior roles for John Carpenter, Snake Plissken in Escape from New York and R. J. MacReady in The Thing. He has to be the action hero, right?

Egg Shen, an ancient Chinese sorcerer who’s currently driving a Chinatown tour bus, points out at the very beginning of the film that Jack displays great courage and Chinatown owes a debt to him. This is an important scene to set up his character, because we meet him next in his truck, boasting over his CB and stuffing his face. He’s clearly a blowhard but he’ll have an impact on the story too.

The more time we spend with him, the more we see that Russell is parodying John Wayne a lot more than playing an actual part. He’s the classic Hollywood leading man. He’s loud and brash and ultraconfident in his abilities almost as a right. He rushes into everything without a thought or concern, because manifest destiny will lead him through triumphant.

By comparison, the real action hero is Wang Chi, who’s short and unassuming and Chinese and runs a restaurant, the Dragon of the Black Pool, hardly things of which American leading men are made. And the real story begins with him, because he’s about to meet his fiancée, a Chinese girl who’s flying in from Peking. She’s Miao Lin and he’s extra lucky because she has green eyes. Jack only goes to the airport with him because Wang owes him money.

So, when Miao Lin is kidnapped by the Lords of Death street gang at the airport, he’s drawn into the story. So’s Kim Cattrall, as Gracie Law, a crusading civil rights lawyer who’s there to pick up another Chinese girl. The two hit it off with a classic love/hate relationship that only seems more appropriate today because they’re both quintessentially American but from polar opposite political ideologies.

Jack and Wang quickly give chase in Jack’s truck, the Pork Chop Express, but end up in an alley in Chinatown during a funeral procession that turns into a gang war. And here’s where it gets special, because the guns and sticks of the Chang Sing and the Wing Kong are nothing to the Three Storms, who appear like magic, one descending from the sky on a bolt of lightning. Suddenly, we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto, and there’s James Hong in glorious ceremonial attire delightfully ignoring the fact that Jack’s just run him over with his truck.

While we’ll spend a lot of time with Russell and Cattrall and there’s a journalist played by similarly white American Kate Burton, most of the actors in this film are Asian American and they’re not just background extras. That was a notable detail when I first watched this in the eighties and it’s just as notable today. “China is here,” says Chao Li Chi as Uncle Chu, and we can believe it. Turning down that alley took us out of the San Francisco we know into a wildly different country, merely hidden on U.S. soil.

In this country, the rules are different. The Chang Sing battle the Wing Kong as they have for centuries and we know that the ridiculous numbers of dead won’t show up on the front pages. David Lo Pan, Godfather of Chinatown, is an ancient sorcerer, more ghost than man in our century, cursed by an ancient emperor but planning to be rejuvenated by marrying then sacrificing a woman with green eyes. Egg Chen is another ancient sorcerer and he plans with Uncle Chu using Chinese astrology, following signs and portents. The Three Storms serve as Lo Pan’s henchmen, harnessing the forces of nature as their weapons. Every moment of this is joy and watching afresh in 2025 reminds me how far from mainstream Hollywood it was.

Russell and Cattrall overact so much they’re more like cartoons than live action characters. Dun doesn’t, going for sincerity instead, but he delivers on the action. Wang Chi dispatches a group of Wing Kong with martial arts prowess while Jack Burton struggles for a knife. While Jack accidentally knocks himself out so misses the start of the finalé, Wang battles the Three Storms while flying through the air like he’s in a live action Dragonball Z.

And behind them are Asian American actors in abundance, from recognisable extras like Al Leong through Carter Wong, Peter Kwong and James Pax as the Three Storms to Victor Wong and James Hong as the ultimate nemeses, Egg Shen and David Lo Pan. They’re all wonderful.

Wong relishes his role as Egg Shen, far more than anyone ever thinks he is. However tough this gets, there’s always a twinkle in his eye as he deals with it. And Hong knows exactly how much of a gift the part of David Lo Pan is.

He’s the all powerful sorcerer ghost with an ornate underground evil lair guarded by weird creatures, a wardrobe of glorious outfits and a pair of gorgeous green eyed girls to wed, as Kim Cattrall has never looked better and Suzee Pai was a Penthouse Pet. However, he’s also a pesky shrivelled old man in a wheelchair, still buzzing with power and arrogance but unable to do much physically. He simply aches to feel young again and glories in its imminence. No wonder this was one pick for his Double.