Settling in Chicago in the 1930s, Jerry Kwan's (Jackie Chan) serene life is turned upside down when an unmerciful head of a mobster syndicate takes his brother's fiancée as hostage and forces Jerry to enter a no-holds-barred combat tournament: The Battle Creek Brawl in Texas. With so much at stake, Jerry enlists the help of his kung fu master to train him for the ultimate fight, only to go head-to-head with a rival mobster boss hell-bent on snatching the Brawl's champion trophy.

"Battle Creek Brawl" imaginatively showcases some of Jackie Chan's best action and fight sequences. It's action as you've never seen it before. Don't miss it!

Crafted by the director and producer that brought you the Bruce Lee classic "Enter The Dragon", "Battle Creek Brawl" is a stunning showcase for the remarkable physical prowess of Jackie Chan. Performing some of the fastest and most powerful Wing Chun hand techniques ever recorded on film, Jackie also stops the show with a multi-point bicycle-kick performed effortlessly without the aid of a wire!

Combining action, romance, and Chan's remarkable physical comedy, "Battle Creek Brawl" is a dynamic martial arts extravaganza which is a resounding hit with fans all over the world. This is one DVD that no self-respecting action cinema devotee should be without!

REVIEW:
As an avid Jackie Chan fan who had yet to see Battle Creek Brawl, it came as a pleasant surprise to see that his first Hollywood crossover, which had been a box office failure was filled with Jackie's distinctive physical humor, great fights (considering who his opponents were), and an easily digestible story.

Not so convincingly set in the 1920's, Battle Creek Brawl begins with a vicious prize fight that a hulking leftover from the early eighties professional wrestling circuit wins. Kiss, named for kissing his "victims" after beating the life out of them is being groomed for the Battle Creek Brawl, a no-holds barred slugfest held in Texas. We're then introduced to Jerry Kwan (Jackie Chan), a free-spirited young bruiser in Chicago who successfully fends off mobsters attempting to extort money from his father, a restaurant owner. He's noticed by the mob boss who decides to use Jerry as his fighter for the Brawl. Jerry's reluctance to sign up is quelled when his brother's girlfriend, fresh off the boat from China is kidnapped by the gangsters. To get her back, he has to win the competition, so he enlists the aid of his wily master, played with flair by the delightful Mako. Jerry is a sure winner as the Brawl begins until a minor plot by a rival mobster threatens to turn Jerry into cutlets. Of course, he ends up on top and finishes off Kiss, appropriately with a kiss.

This was Jackie Chan's first film produced in the United States in cooperation with Raymond Chow of Golden Harvest. It was a rough time for Jackie who was not adjusting to Hollywood filmmaking while Robert Clouse and his "slow" moving stunt team were not providing the best venue for Jackie's unique skills. In addition, he was waiting for trouble with director Lo Lieh and the triads to blow over back in Hong Kong. Actor Jimmy Wang Yu would come to his aid. In the meantime, Jackie was working on his English and trying his best to create a Hollywood breakthrough. Battle Creek Brawl did not provide this opportunity, but it can't be blamed on Jackie. The only thing that makes it work is his bubbling charm and potent skills which shine through the improbable circumstances found within the film.

Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon) makes a mockery of the period setting by paying very little attention to costumes and props. You'll have no problem spotting bellbottom jeans or "modern" roller skating gear. The plot is thinner than most Taiwanese kung fu pics and most noticeably glosses over the kidnapping of the Chinese girl. This is the whole reason Chan goes to fight and he ends up giving the mobster responsible a thumbs up at the end, before he's even set her free! At least Lalo Schifrin's Ennio Morricone-inspired score both compliments the intended era and adds an appropriate tone to Jackie's high jinx.

Although Jackie has given the impression over the years that he had little control over this film, his signature is all over it. There's a lot of great humor and his relationship with Mako, one of my favorite Asian-American actors is terrific. You may have heard Mako as the voice of Aku on the hit Cartoon Network series, Samurai Jack. In this film, Mako plays Jackie's martial arts teacher who uses a cane as his weapon and scolds Jackie about the evils of women right before sneaking away to hop into bed with a rather large female. This Japanese born actor has been featured in numerous American martial arts films, including Bulletproof Monk with Chow Yun Fat.

There haven't been very many Hong Kong/Hollywood crossovers and for the time, this film does about as well as could be expected on a limited budget. Despite his slow-moving and immensely large opponents, Chan cuts in and out with flips, kicks, and his rapid punches. This is certainly not a showcase film for Chan. The Young Master, which came out the same year was light years ahead in terms of fight choreography. But, for Jackie Chan fans, Battle Creek Brawl deserves to be seen, if only to see how he humorously fights a bunch of muscle-bound gweilos. Its certainly one of his most unique screen efforts and had it been more successful, he might have forged a career in Hollywood long before Rush Hour came along...

On the surface, things looked good. The movie was being backed by the Warner Bros. studio and would have a budget bigger than any of Chan's Hong Kong movies, and was going to be directed by Robert Clouse, who had helmed the most popular kung fu film of all time, Enter the Dragon. Thematically, it was to have contained many elements from the Hollywood Golden Age (films from the 1930's and 40's) that Chan admired so much. In fact, the film was pitched to Chan as an "Eastern Western" -- something that was a dream idea of Chan's. However, one thing lurked beneath the surface -- something that would make Chan miserable and turn this film into the horrible mish-mash that it is. Everyone involved -- the producers, the director, the studio -- wanted Chan to become the thing he had run away from in Hong Kong. They wanted him to become the next Bruce Lee.

The film's shadow of a plot revolves around Chan inadvertently putting the proverbial monkey wrench into gangster Jose Ferrer's plans. Eventually, Ferrer puts the squeeze on Chan's family and Chan finds himself competing in a bare-knuckle fighting tournament to save the family business (which is, of course, a laundry). Really, the particulars don't matter. This movie's horrible from beginning to end. The script, the cinematography, the acting -- they're all bad. Probably the biggest disappointment are the fight sequences. No one on the set allowed Chan any input at all, and as such, well, they're just pathetic. One of the movie's major sequences has Chan battling the gangsters during a roller-skating race. Now, this could actually be good; anyone who's seen Rollerball could attest to that. But in this movie, it comes off as what it is -- a bunch of people who can barely skate attempting to create a fight scene under the supervison of a director who has no idea of what his star can do.

This may (and I stress may) be worth a look for major Chan fans who want to see his US debut. But, honestly, this kind of movie is better left forgotten.

And to wrap up the long-winded story I've set up in this review, Chan was able to go back to Hong Kong via some help from old-school star Jimmy Wang Yu, who had his own Triad connections. He was eventually able to make his Eastern Western (albeit twenty years later) with Shanghai Noon. After the dismal failure of the film, Robert Clouse found himself regulated to doing B-list martial arts movies... and, in perhaps one of the most pathetic attempts to cover ones' tracks, later stated in the documentary The Deadliest Art that Chan was "one of the best people he had ever worked with."

Jackie plays Jerry, a Chinese immigrant in 1930's Chicago who's father's restaurant is under constant harassment from local hoodlums. After an incident where Jerry comes to the rescue of his father the crooks realise that they are dealing with a powerful fighter for which they may have a use.

Every year the Texas town of Battlecreek hosts a fighting competition and the gangsters want a fighter they can bet on who has a good chance of winning. To persuade Jerry to take part the gangsters kidnap his brother's bride to be and promise her safe return upon the announcement of a winner. Matters get more complicated when a rival gang, who have a fighter of their own, kidnap Jerry's uncle to force him to lose.

'The Battlecreek Brawl' is an entertaining enough film but doesn't really compare to Jackie's Hong Kong efforts. Bringing in Robert Clouse to direct must have seemed like a good idea at the time, after all he had been at the helm of the extremely successful 'Enter The Dragon'. Clouse's directions is competent but ultimately quite dull. In his autobiography Jackie describes how every scene was story boarded leaving no room for any input from himself or any opportunity for ad-libbing in the fight scenes.

Also in Jackie's Hong Kong films the fights have owed as much to the opponents as they have to Jackie himself. Fighting competence in an opponent is a good thing in a kung fu movie. Sadly, with one exception, the fights in 'The Battlecreek Brawl' see Jackie pitted against either bumbling gangster types or WCW rejects. The net effect is that the fights are, on the whole, rather lacklustre affairs that don't really give Jackie any scope to show what he can really do.

Aside the fight scenes the movie is well made in terms of acting, dialogue and plot. Jackie uses his own voice and given that he had only begun to learn English he doesn't do a bad job. Still, its always the fights that make a Jackie Chan film and inevitably watching this movie is a rather unsatisfying experience.