Rumble in the Bronx

Sympathetic humor and impressive beatings in a very poorly made film, which entertains its audience.

Although I know the actor from other movies, this was the first Jackie Chan movie I saw. He brings to life a friendly young man from Hong Kong who comes to the USA for his uncle's wedding, who has lived in the Bronx, New York, for many years. During his stay, he will see his uncle sell his shop in order to retire and spend his old age on a ranch, and he will also have to face a biker gang and a mafia organization that has lost a bag of diamonds that end up in the power of the character played by Chan. Of course, it's all going to end up in a beating.

The film is quite good at its simple and direct task of entertaining the audience. There's a nice, well-measured mix of humor and action. The jokes are quite naive, but they work and give the film a familiar and friendly touch that is pleasant without turning it into a tear-jerking comedy. The fight scenes are the strong point, and it is worth seeing the highly choreographed fights that Chan fights with ten or twenty opponents simultaneously, and in which he uses all his knowledge of martial arts. However, let's not have any illusions: the film shows the fight scenes a little faster than in reality, which amplifies the effect, but takes away the verisimilitude of what we are seeing.

Chan is likeable and perhaps one of the most palatable actors in the vast universe of stars whose careers were based on thuggish films (Van Damme, Chuck Norris and others). He deserves a good grade, both for his acting and for his fight scenes. Unfortunately, he's the only actor worth mentioning because the others are all pretty amateurish. But let no one think that Chan gives us a lesson in acting! He does what he's supposed to do: be funny and kick ass. It's Jackie Chan, not Lawrence Olivier. Anita Mui and Françoise Yip are here simply because the film needed some pretty faces.

The script is quite weak, a mere excuse for high doses of comedy and beatings for all tastes. The poverty of the script is such that, halfway through the film, we already forget the names of the characters and why Chan came to the US. These are questions that we soon feel are irrelevant (or rather, that were considered irrelevant in this film). The villains are really weak - the mobsters look scared, and the biker gang is ridiculous. However, all of this is relatively forgivable when we think of the poor editing work that went into this film. The cuts couldn't be more obvious and misplaced. There are scenes that seem to be inserted with a hammer, others appear suddenly, or end suddenly, just like the film itself, which ends so suddenly that it feels like an episode of a TV series and not a film for the cinema.