Mr. Nice Guy (1998)

Very disappointing...

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

How sad is this?

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A typical Jackie Chan film that offers up tons of breathtaking action and not much else, this is action film-making well above average. Now I've heard critics complain about Jackie Chan films and this film in particular having no plot or complex storyline. Instead they possess childish, over-simplified stories which just involve different characters getting chased, caught, escaping, and getting chased again, usually involving a character or an item that the bad guys are after (here it's a videotape). I don't really understand this level of criticism. If you're looking for plot and story go see a film like FARGO or A SIMPLE PLAN instead. Action films I hate are those which contain an abundance of plot and dialogue and a minimum of action. Reverse that quota and you have utterly entertaining cinema, action, and excitement from start to finish with barely time to breathe. MR. NICE GUY is no exception, a return to the old days for Jackie where the action was plentiful and the stunts come thick and fast.Sure, there are a few dodgy aspects to the film but none of them are particularly surprising. The acting is generally terrible, especially from the western actresses brought into the movie to tell it to an overseas audience. Chan speaks English here which adds to the authenticity and his accent is pretty easy to understand. The best role goes to Richard Norton, an old pro who handles the part of his slimy gangster villain with ease and who has some great lines and mannerisms. Check out the bizarre fight sequence between Chan and Norton, which has Chan restrained with elastic to give Norton a helping hand. It makes little sense but is pretty amusing.As for the action, it mainly takes the form of chases which is fine by me. There are fights in a shopping mall (recalling POLICE STORY) and a stand out sequence involving a chase on a horse-drawn carriage which is very well shot (check out the superior stunt in which Chan falls off, nearly going under the wheels of a bus and only saving himself with his hands). The kung fu is nice and fast and always exciting, with Chan making great use of props for danger and action. Another highlight is a battle in a workshop with bits of wood and circular saws everywhere. Things culminate in a terrific finale involving a truly massive bulldozer demolishing a building. Scenes where Jackie lies on his back, pushing himself backwards with his feet to avoid getting crushed under the wheel of the truck, or where he hangs onto the wheel to get into the cab, are classic and showcase an athletic and dare-defying Chan at his finest. Sammo Hung handles the direction and makes a good job of it, only spoiling things slightly with some silly slow-motion inserts. Check out his cameo as an irate cyclist!

Jackie Chan is Mr. Nice Guy, a TV Chef who helps a beautiful young woman when she is chased by a gang of thugs. What he quickly learns is that she is a Journalist who has just uncovered a drug ring, and she has a video tape that could bring it down; and this tape accidentally gets switched with one of his own.This is the first Jackie Chan movie to be shot entirely in English, and its a fast paced all action, Kung-Fu fighting, comedy roller-coaster that simply great fun to watch. Chan is typically awesome at his art of fighting and in his usual style he takes on the bad guys and kicks butt throughout the movie.7/10 Great fun and packed with great martial arts, done the Jackie Chan way.

Jackie Chan is the best actor in "Mr. Nice Guy", which should give you an idea of how shoddy the acting is here. Worse, Jackie Chan is far and away the best actor here by a wide margin, and Jackie never really "acts", he just is affable and charming on camera. Everyone else here is community theater level or worse, which has to be at least partly the fault of director Sammo Hung. Chan films tend to need a lot of highly skilled stunt-men, and the two skill sets (double back flips through a pane glass window vs believable readings of a prosaic line of dialog) are not often found in one actor. But the non-action oriented supporting cast is just as bad. So either Hung didn't know how to get better takes from his actors and stunt-men, or he didn't realize (looking at the rushes) that what he had was bad (at least for Occidental expectations), or he just wasn't interested in the dialog and character interaction, except as an excuse to get to the next action sequence. (I'm inclined to believe it's a combination of the 2nd and 3rd explanations). However, the action sequences are, as usual extremely impressive and engaging, and well worth your time and money to see. What can you say, it's Jackie Chan with a real budget and room to play. However, even here "Mr. Nice Guy" isn't quite up to the level of pieces like "Super Cop", "First Strike" or "Who Am I?" because the action falters a bit at the end. Instead of taking down the chief bad guy and his henchmen in a flurry of furious martial arts action, ***plot spoiler follows*** Chan's character commandeers an earth mover and drives it through the head villain's house. It's quite an amusing spectacle, I'll admit, and I give the movie credit for trying something different. But it just seems like an easy out, and not in the same league as the climaxes to films like "Drunken Master II" or "Project A" or "Armor Of God".***Plot spoiler ends*****Obviously, I am a fan of the man, going back to his "Protector" and "Police Force" days before "The Big Brawl" was first released in the West. So I would say that if you are a fan like me, you'll want to see "Mr. Nice Guy" on general principle, and you'll find lots to enjoy about it. But I think most Chan enthusiasts won't have it in their "Top 5" list of favorite Jackie Chan movies, or even the "Top 10".

I hope IMDb doesn't mind if I disagree with their Amazon review of Mr. Nice Guy and the critic's factual errors. Considering all of the gangsters are Australian, and only one is of Italian heritage, we're not dealing with a gang of "stereotypical Italians." Nor do I think the actors mugging and clowning around here qualify as a "cast...in a coma." As for the reviewer's nervous insistence that "the plot is stupid, stupid, stupid," heaven help her when she gets to Who Am I? and Operation Condor. I thought the main switcheroo plot device was fine, and the gang war storyline was inoffensive. If anything is stupid (and to a degree that doesn't require repeating the word) it's the usual juvenile, cartoonlike acting, drama, humor, and pacing found in all of the foreign Chan films I've seen. Nothing to get upset about, just some silliness to laugh at.Some of the humor is welcome, too, particularly the goofy, cheery ice cream man (who meets a hilarious fate) and Sammo Hung himself as a poor, abused cyclist who finally gets in his licks. When this film came to theaters in 1998, a local film critic also suggested that the casting of Richard Norton as the wealthy, black-clad villain was a jab at Chan's acquaintance, Hollywood star (and Norton look-alike) Steven Seagal.And just as the drawing points of most Hollywood musicals are the songs and dance instead of their weak plots, here the well-choreographed fights and other action scenes are the attraction and more than "almost compensate" for any cheese. Creatively designed and impressively performed after much practice, the fights are also easier to watch since they avoid showing graphic violence, unlike typical Hollywood gorefests.The choice of settings for the action scenes shows some real verve as well. One of my favorites was the mass biker wedding, where Chan hangs from a giant balloon decoration and bounces up and down across the lawn to escape the baddies, who are soon mobbed by the upstanding bikers! And who'd have thought you could get so much material out of staging a fight on a horse-drawn carriage rushing through a city? Even the Pepsi product placement at least gives us the great spectacle of a soda truck spilling all its cans onto the street, where the characters brawl until cola is spraying here and there.The only things that hinder the action scenes are the occasional use of jerky slow-motion and a finale made dull by being long and repetitive.Finally, I have a certain enjoyable memory related to this movie, one that may sum up where the film will stand with you depending on your tastes. As a teenager, I saw Mr. Nice Guy in a theater with a rather pretentious man whose preferred film-going involves movie titles preceded by the adjective "Oscar-winning," which to him matters most. I had a fun time at the show, but afterwards the man stayed silent until he met his wife, when I overheard him grumble to her, "That was a *terrible* movie!" This memory always amuses me.