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Jackie Chan is a celebrity chef turned reluctant hero after he rescues a pretty journalist from the clutches of a ruthless drug lord. At stake is an incriminating videotape that has accidentally fallen into Jackie's hands. With the gang in hot pursuit, the action stretches from one spectacular, stunt-filled scene to another. When Jackie's girlfriend is kidnapped and his apartment blown up, this mild-mannered chef cooks up his own recipe for justice. The mob will never know what hit them, because Jackie's back with a vengeance to strike a blow for good guys everywhere. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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 |  |  |  |  Probably Jackie's best film since "Drunken Master II", this one is full of fun and action, and not too heavily bogged down by the other crap that's infiltrated his other recent films. Spirited direction by Sammo Hung ensures that the action is top notch, but the outtakes prove that a lot of fighting scenes were left out. This time around, Jackie is a kung fu chef who accidentally gets hold of a video tape that two gangs are after. He eventually prevails by driving a monstrous dumptruck through the bad guy's house, in a set piece that's just a little too long and tedious for its own good (reminiscent of the shark scene in "First Strike"). Sadly, the climax is a letdown because the anticipated showdown between Jackie and villain Richard Norton never happens. A flawed film, but a fun and exciting one. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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| Chan stars as a TV chef who gets caught up in the middle of a gang war when he accidentally switches videotapes with a reporter.
I think you have to take this film with a grain of salt. It was Chan's first English-language film in over ten years and, according to rumors, it was more of a test for New Line to see if Chan could handle speaking in English for an entire film. As such, not much attention was paid to the story (it's more of a rehash of Rumble in the Bronx than anything else), and most of the action pieces in the film are recycled from previous Chan movies (the mall fight from Police Story, the construction brawl from Police Story 2, etc.).
All that being said, the film is fairly entertaining if you don't go in expecting too much. The action (as could be expected under Hung's direction) is done well and some of the jokes are actually pretty funny (Hung is hilarious in a cameo as a beat-up bike messenger). There are a few sticky points, though. Once again (as in Operation Condor) Chan has three ditzy female sidekicks dragging on him (and the story) for much of the film, and Richard Norton (a good fighter you might know from the China O'Brien films or another Chan movie City Hunter) is absolutely wasted in his role as the villain; we don't even get to see a decent fight between him and Chan (apparently, Chan hurt himself and could not film a big fight sequence).
Mr. Nice Guy, like many Chan films, also suffers from what I like to call a "Warner Bros. ending," named after those Bugs Bunny cartoons where the creators don't know how to finish the cartoon, so they just have Bugs break into a song-and-dance, crack a lame joke or other such nonsense. The ending here seems to be really tacked on and weak. The story is literally wrapped up in about two minutes. I won't ruin it for you, but I think once you see it, you'll be scratching your head, thinking "That's it?" Yup. That's all folks. |
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