Right before Rush Hour, Jackie Chan ran the slapstick obstacle course of Mr. Nice Guy
Film Features Watch This
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: Jackie Chan has two new movies, Vanguard and Iron Mask, headed for release. To honor the occasion, we’re recommending a few of his best vehicles.
Mr. Nice Guy (1997)
When the hero of a Jackie Chan movie heads to a construction site with a full half-hour left on the clock, it produces a form of giddy, idealistic hope: Maybe, just maybe, it will segue into a TV episode’s worth of nonstop props-based mayhem. Mr. Nice Guy doesn’t reach that platonic ideal, but it still sends Chan through a delightful series of obstacle courses leading up to a climactic construction site free-for-all, featuring all the beams, boards, pallets, and temporary doors a slapstick athlete could ask for.
Following the success of Rumble In The Bronx, North American audiences were treated to a crash course in Chan’s brand of action-comic dexterity, as several studios wide-released a variety of his recent hits and catalog titles. Mr. Nice Guy had less of a lag than some, arriving in the U.S. a year and change after its 1997 Hong Kong debut, with 13 minutes trimmed out by New Line Cinema. (A recent Warner Archive Blu-ray includes both the original cut and the New Line version.) Regardless of timing, it was a turning point in Chan’s career: This was his first action film written and shot in English (it’s set in Australia), and his last wide U.S. release before Rush Hour took him to another, more Americanized level of stardom.
Compared to the Police Story films (two of which preceded Mr. Nice Guy in America as Supercop and Jackie Chan’s First Strike), Nice Guy feels like a palate cleanser. Although Chan does eventually drive a massive piece of construction equipment through a building, most of the other stunts are smaller scale, in part because he isn’t playing a, well, supercop. He’s a mild-mannered TV chef (named Jackie, naturally) who has a chance meeting with Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick), a journalist on the trail of a hot story. She’s pursued by gangsters who know she has a video of them murdering a street gang leader. As she and Jackie escape, the incriminating tape gets switched with one of Jackie’s TV recordings, putting the gangsters on his tail.
How and why this tape includes cinematic cuts to various angles is never explained—and the story has plenty of more obvious convolutions, too. It doesn’t much matter, though, as the ins and outs establish a simple formula to generate set pieces: Jackie goes somewhere seemingly safe, a bunch of chintzily dressed gangsters show up and swarm him demanding the tape, and he’s forced to fight his way out. Director and fellow martial artist Sammo Hung (who also has a running-gag cameo as an unlucky cyclist) choreographs the action with such a light touch that even the occasional bombast feels whimsical, like how a mayhem-heavy chase scene revolves around a horse-drawn carriage. As ever, Chan turns his affability into a weapon; when he stumbles into Diana’s peril (which, in the New Line cut at least, happens hilariously fast, at the seven-minute mark), he’s absorbed into the action effortlessly, even though he never looks as if he particularly wants to hurt anyone. (In the first extended fight scene, he spends a comical amount of time trying not to fire a gun.)
The only disappointment is the grievous lack of a full-on kitchen fight sequence. In a less entertaining movie, casting Chan as a chef without ever contriving a reason for him to balance on an avalanche of rolling pins or using a baking sheet as a shield would be malpractice. Mr. Nice Guy zips by almost too quickly to notice.
Availability: The U.S. cut of Mr. Nice Guy can be rented or purchased from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, DirectTV, or VUDU.
21 Comments
This is the kind of movie where it barely even registers that you just saw the star roll just inches over an active sawblade, because everything around it is even more insane.
In the age of YouTube, it’s probably tougher to justify actually seeing a Jackie Chan movie rather than just looking up individual fight scenes. I could not have told you what Mr. Nice Guy’s plot was, but after having refreshed my memory from reading the article, I think I was fine having forgotten the plot. There are really only a handful of Jackie Chan’s movies that have much to offer in terms of plot, character, or performances that justify watching the movie in its entirety. (If Anita Mui is in it, then you might want to give the whole movie a shot.)
Mr. Nice Guy falls into that category of Chan films that perfectly fit Hitchcock’s description of the McGuffin. There’s something there whether it’s diamonds or, in this case, an incriminating tape that’s just there to move the story forward. It doesn’t matter what it is, and it could be virtually anything.
This. I just rewatched Police Story/SuperCop and whoo boy it was bad. Chan smacking around Michelle Yeoh like that wasn’t funny or nice guy either. Ditto for Who Am I.
I know! Who Am I? is nearly unwatchable because of everything surrounding the albeit awesome fight scenes: the terrible acting esp. from Michelle Ferre, the “natives”, THE PLOT.When you watch Police Story or Project A, it’s painful to watch Maggie Cheung play the insufferable damsel especially when you’ve seen her in In The Mood for Love; Comrades, Almost a Love Story; Irma Vep. Operation Condor likewise has incredible action pieces but tough to watch because of the trio of helpless, klutzy ‘damsels’.Jackie and his movies definitely had some major problems with how to portray women.
I haven’t seen Who Am I? in years — decades, even — but it was actually my first choice for this series, until I found out it’s not streaming legally/easily in the U.S. (at least as far as I could find). I’m sure I was just less aware of that stuff when I saw it in 1998 or 1999, but my recollection is that it had amazing fight scenes *and* action scenes (some of the other ones I’d seen seem to favor one or the other), and that the plot, while ridiculous, is kind of amusingly loopy rather than just slapdash.
It would have been a good choice for looking at fight scenes, despite my complaints about the rest of the movie. The final fight is a nice contrast to the construction site fight in Mr. Nice Guy or ladder fight in First Strike, which rely a lot on props. This one is just furious punching and kicking like his fights with Benny “The Jet” or his Gorgeous fight with Brad Allen.I haven’t seen Who Am I? in a long time either, but now that you mention it, it does have some good action pieces like the car chase scene.
The rooftop fight scene is what I’ll remember most about Who Am I?. And that’s all I have to remember, honestly.
You just suddenly reminded me how tone deaf and racist that whole “african natives” thing was in Who am I. Yeah, its preeety bad. At least Maggie came to her senses and left the Police Story series and didn’t appear in any more of his movies ever again. Ditto for Yeoh.
And also RIP Anita Mui. I didn’t know she died years ago.
Her death is actually the reason the third act of House of Flying Daggers is so loopy. She was initially cast as the Flying Daggers’ leader, and after her death Zhang Yimou felt recasting the role would be disrespectful, so instead he heavily rewrote that whole section to remove the character as an onscreen presence.
I’m not sure there’s a better example of how much Sammo loves extremely long stretches of slo-mo than this movie. It’d be about ten minutes long in the hands of any other director.
The ‘plot’ is just an excuse to set Jackie Chan on an adventure to display his brand of entertainment much in the same way that Cheech & Chong movies set up comedic scenes to show off their stoner comedy or the way many action movies were there to display their star’s famous grimace, smile, or roundhouse kick. I enjoyed Mr. Nice Guy but forget what it was mostly ‘about’. I do remember Richard Norton being a clean freak villain and that it was set in Australia. Other than the Chan and Sung’s stunt work, that’s pretty much all I got for this one.
Maybe the movie lacks a kitchen fight because the potential weapons available in such a scenario would cause too much visible bodily carnage for a Jackie Chan film. Although I would like to see him defend himself with that large piece of dough in the preview.
Right?! The dough, yes, and you’re telling me Chan couldn’t put together a great non-lethal battle with some spoons and ladles?!?!
He certainly could, but you’d need an explanation why nobody is grabbing the knives, meat cleavers and pans filled with scalding oil. Or am I overthinking a Jackie Chan movie?
jackie would slap with a wooden spoon any hands that reached for anything more lethal of course.really there’s no excuse for the lack of kitchen related hijinks.
Haven’t seen it in 20 years, but I remember this as my favourite Jackie movie.Watched Sammo Hung’s semi-forgotten TV series Martial Law in peak lockdown, and although it’s hurt by a high cast turnover for a two season show, much of it is great, some episodes packing a combination of very 90s high concept storytelling with well choreographed action in a tight 45 minutes.
Whoa, I was not prepared for that 3EB in the trailer.
After that, watch “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”
I have never liked Sammo Hung’s choreography, which I guess is why I prefer First Strike (holy shit the ladder fight) and Rumble in the Bronx, which were both directed and choreographed by Stanley Tong.There’s something about Sammo Hung that really messes with my suspension of disbelief and always feels amateur and contrived.