Mr. Nice Guy (1997)

Mr. Nice Guy (1997)
Chinese Title: 一個好人
Translation: One Good Man

 

Starring: Jackie Chan, Miki Lee, Richard Norton, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, Karen McLymont, Barry Otto, Vince Poletto, cameos by Sammo Hung and Emil Chow

Director: Sammo Hung

Action Director: Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association, Cho Wing

 

When I picked up Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon by Clyde Gentry III back in August 1997, the last chapters of the book mentioned Mr. Nice Guy, plus Rush Hour[1] and Who Am I? The writing suggested that the former had wrapped up production, although the author let on that he himself had not had the opportunity to watch the film as of whatever moment he sent in the manuscript to the publisher. When I picked up The Official Jackie Chan Sourcebook by Jeff Rovin several months later, there was a small review of it in the filmography section, while Who Am I? was in production.

Around January of 1998, I started pestering one of my good Chinese friends for whatever Chinese action film he could get his hands on. I asked if he had Lung Hing Foo Dai (i.e. Armour of God) and he just sort of shrugged—he wasn’t good with the names. He eventually got a movie for me, which turned out to a laser disc rip of Mr. Nice Guy. This was a good two months or so before it got its American release; I considered myself a lucky man. This was the first—but not last—time that I would be able to watch a Jackie Chan movie before the rest of American audiences could.

Clyde Gentry’s book suggested that Mr. Nice Guy would essentially be one long chase sequence, and that’s really not far from the truth. We open with an Australian drug lord named Giancarlo (Richard Norton, The Magic Crystal and City Hunter) warmly greeting his girlfriend, Tina (Judy Green, who is Richard Norton’s wife and appeared in films of his like Sword of the Bushido and Under the Gun), who’s hanging out in the Jacuzzi at his mansion. He tells her that he has found out that she’s a member of the rival Demons[2] gang and orders his men to take her to “the Guest House.” What that translates into is that they throw her off a cliff while an ultra-class Haul Truck[3] buries her in a mountain of dirty. Exit Tina, stage left.

Shortly afterward, Giancarlo and his men arrange for a meeting with the Demons in an abandoned building. It seems that one of his men had been dating a girl, Tara (Rachel Blakely, of The Lost World TV series), who turned out to be one of the head Demons. This resulted in the theft of 10 million dollars worth of cocaine from Giancarlo’s possession. The Demons show up and Giancarlo offers to give them half a million dollars for his stuff back. The leader of the Demons, Gronk (Peter Lindsay, of Blood Chase and Delta Force 2), turns down the offer. Things quickly get heated and shots are fired between the rival gangs. Gronk is mortally wounded and a grenade thrown by one of the Demons reveals that a pair of investigative reporters, Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie) and Richard, had recorded the entire fracas. Richard gets shot, leaving Diana to make a run for it with the tape of the events in her possession.

Diana runs into Jackie (Chan), a local celebrity with a popular cooking program. Giancarlo’s men immediately assume that the two in cahoots and soon Chan is running around Melbourne fighting off goons. Being a Jackie Chan film, this is Counter-Earth Melbourne, where bikers participate in mass weddings officiated by Biker Reverends, which ceremonies are decorated by giant gorilla balloons filled with helium! Jackie eventually shakes off the gangsters, but a mix up leaves him with Diana’s tape. The tape falls into hands of his friend Romeo’s children. Romeo (Vince Poletto, of Sally Marshall is Not an Alien) is a cop, but he is generally useless until the third act.

After the initial encounter, the bad guys chase him at a mall where he and his partner, Baggio (Barry Otto, of Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher and Rogue), are throwing a charity event. Then they attack his house, which scene ends with him and female entourage—Diana; Lakisha (Karen McLymont), his producer; and his girlfriend, Miki (Taiwanese model Miki Lee)—narrowly escaping a series of explosions that reduce his apartment to rubble. Then the Demons kidnap Miki, leading him on a wild goose chase all over Melbourne. While all this is happening, a whole bunch of fights break out, this being a Jackie Chan movie and all that.

Jackie Chan movies have frequently been attacked for their thin plots. I think this says more about the reviewers themselves: complaining about the plot of a Jackie Chan movie usually means that the reviewer is little more than a pretentious bag of dicks. That said, Mr. Nice Guy has an especially thin plot. I’m pretty sure the plot stops after the first act and from there on out becomes the set up for each successive action set piece. I suppose that it beats Rumble in the Bronx in that the gangs are a little less colorful (or tacky) than the multi-ethnic street gangs roaming NYC in that film. Moreover, at least the this doesn’t switch villains halfway through the movie. That said, there’s not much meat on the script’s bones, so Jackie Chan naysayers will probably not be converted by this movie.

This was the first time Jackie had worked under Sammo Hung’s direction since Dragons Forever. According to Inside the Dragon, Jackie looked more relaxed under Sammo’s direction than he had in some time[4]. Hung keeps the movie moving at a fast clip, with rarely ten minutes passing before another stunt-based action sequence begins. At the same time, Sammo does give the film a slight intense edge missing from a lot of Chan’s typical action comedies. There is a hint of sadism to Norton’s Giancarlo, although it never goes over the top like the woodchipper scene in Rumble in the Bronx. Chan is his usual likable self, although he does display the manic intensity that defined his Kevin Chan from the first Police Story movie during that character’s more desperate moments.

Jackie Chan’s stunt team, including Nicky Li Chung-Chi and Andy Cheng, handled the action duties, assisted by Cho Wing (of In the Line of Duty IV and Kung Fu Cult Master). Their efforts won them a nomination for the Best Action Choreography Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, although they lost to Stephen Tung Wai for Downtown Torpedoes. Mr. Nice Guy did, however, beat out Downtown Torpedoes for the Taiwan Golden Horse Award in the same category. The action on display is vintage Jackie Chan, so most of his fans should be pleased with the fighting and stuntwork on display. The now-defunct “Martial Artist’s Guide to Hong Kong Films” wrote:

 

Jackie and Sammo know each other, and they know action, and it shows. The timing of the action sequences, down to the minute details, is exceptionally good here. Much of the infighting that Jackie uses vs. the thugs is great…[Jackie] must fight his way through shopping centers, into weddings, over rooftops, in vans, on public transportation, across construction sites, etc. etc. using every possible trick. It is absolute mayhem. What's more, the stuntwork and action start quick and then BUILDS.

 

Indeed, Jackie looks great in his fights and does some great kicking, especially during the closed-quarters van fight. Watch for a nice whirlwind kick during the much-hyped construction site sequence, too. The action in Police Story IV: First Strike was a little disappointing because Chan spent the movie fighting on the defensive. Here he’s fighting with pure fury when he needs to.

The aforementioned construction sequence is as odd as it is funny (and thrilling). It starts off with Chan fighting off the gangsters in a section of the building whose rooms all appear to be about nine square feet. It becomes a complex sequence of Jackie Chan opening and closing doors as he fights his way through the rooms. In some cases, the doors open to absolutely nothing, almost resulting in Chan falling to his doom. The fight progresses to a more open area of construction, where the gangsters come at him with metal pipes and buzz saws, while Chan fights back with boards, cement mixers, jackhammers, and buckets. In one moment of insanity, Chan around a running table saw. A fraction of a second in misjudged movement would have bisected our friend.

The action does flag unfortunately in the last twenty minutes, when Jackie is transported to Giancarlo’s home. People expecting a repeat of their lengthy end fight from City Hunter were undoubtedly disappointed: they have a short fight in which Chan has to square off with Norton with bungee cords tied to his arms and legs. Norton’s lackeys pull the cord every time he tries to land a punch or kick. It’s a novel idea, but I think we the viewers wanted something that would really test the limits of the combatants’ physical abilities.

Much like Rumble in the Bronx and Thunderbolt, this movie eschews a typical fight-based climax for something a little more stunt-based. In this case, Jackie is able to commandeer the haul truck and drive it through Giancarlo’s mansion, razing the structure as if it were the victim of a giant monster attack. Fountains, glass walls, staircases, designer cars, etc. are completely destroyed during this demolition sequence. Jackie Chan movies were successful enough on the international market that he was able to spend a bit more money for these large-scale set pieces. While some fans would have liked this mayhem, most people from people close to the author to professional critics like Leonard Maltin, would have preferred less driving and more stunt-fighting.

If you can ignore the flimsy excuse for a plot and Miki Lee’s shrill acting, there is more than enough creative action and stuntwork in Mr. Nice Guy to make for a mainless 90 minutes of entertainment. It’s not Jackie Chan’s best, although the dire nature of a lot of his post 2010-work means that it’s overdue for a reevaluation from the most pretentious of Hong Kong movie lovers.

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[1] - Interestingly enough, this was when Martin Lawrence was still attached to the project, before Chris Tucker got onboard.

[2] - If you watch the Hong Kong version with the burned-on subtitles, it’s the Wolves Gang.

[3] - Large dump trucks used mainly in mining operations.

[4] - It should be pointed out that Jackie worked with a number of other directors throughout the 1990s—Wong Jing, Kirk Wong, Gordon Chan, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Lau Kar-Leung—and each of those experiences turned out to be less than satisfying for Chan.