Movie Review: Thunderbolt

Kind of an odd movie in the Jackie Chan filmography, Thunderbolt sees Jackie playing....well, it's kind of hard to tell. The opening credits montage seems to show him as an automotive engineer, a car test driver, a tow truck driver, and auto racer and a corporate mail delivery boy(?). Once the movie itself starts, he appears to be doing automobile customization work, but he's also helping the police bust illegal street racers.

Suffice it to say, this may not have been the most carefully thought-out film.

Which is surprising, because it looks like they might have had to spend some money on this one. There's an extensive set piece where Jackie's workshop/living quarters are destroyed by a trailer swung around on a crane, another where a Pachinko parlor is destroyed, and this being a racing film, there is of course a lengthy race scene at the end, with numerous crashes (it's more like a demolition derby by the final few laps). I doubt anyone was paid real money for this work, but it still looks impressive.

There's also a couple of good action/fight scenes. The aforementioned property destruction is one, but the standout actually occurs earlier, when a gang first tries to just beat up Jackie in his shop. This isn't the more light-hearted style of fighting usually seen in Chan's movies; things seem to be taken a little more seriously here. This is particularly seen in an assault on a police station with grenades and automatic weapons - actually on-screen bloodshed was pretty rare in Jackie Chan movies at this point in his career, and this part was more of a Western-style action film than Hong Kong.

Sadly, the early momentum is not sustained, and once we hit the big race at the end, we are treated to a lot of scenes of cars passing each other and crashing. I'm not a big race fan, so this really didn't do much for me. The camerawork in general didn't help much either - lots of stuttering slow-motion type effects were used for some reason, enough to be distracting. I'd rather see the big finale to a Jackie Chan movie be a big fight scene, not watching a stuntman drive a car around.

So in the end, a few parts are of interest, but on the whole, not a good effort. Two stars. Up next in my ongoing chronological Jackie Chan film festival: Jackie makes attempt number four to enter the U.S. market with Rumble In The Bronx.