Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is not a complicated person.  He drives a truck for a living.  He’s loyal to his friends.  He likes a good beer and a pretty girl.  He tries to do the right thing so when the fiancée of his best friend, Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), is kidnapped, he teams up with Wang to rescue her.  And when Jack’s truck gets stolen after he runs over an evil, ancient Chinese sorcerer named Lo Pan (James Hong), Jack just wants to get his truck back.  Instead, Jack finds himself in the middle of an ancient battle between good and evil as Lo Pan searches for a green-eyed woman to sacrifice so that he can defeat a curse that was put upon him centuries ago.

Big Trouble In Little China is one of John Carpenter’s most exuberant films.  It mixes kung fu action with special effects and a good dose of physical humor from Kurt Russell.  When Lisa and I watched this movie a few months ago, Lisa commented that this film was Kurt Russell’s “Bruce Campbell movie,” and the more I think about it, the more I agree.  Russell plays Jack with a mix of cockiness and klutziness that should be very familiar to anyone who has followed the adventures of Ash Williams.  While Dennis Dun gets to do the typically heroic stuff that you would expect from the star of a movie like this, Russell is just someone who wants to get his truck back and who is consistently weirded-out by the magic around him.  Carpenter makes sure that the movie is full of action as he pays tribute to the kung fu films that he watched when he was still in film school. James Hong is great villain and the rest of the cast, including Kim Cattrall as lawyer Gracie Law, all match the energy of Russell, Hong, and Dun.  Complete with flying swordsmen, demons with glowing eyes, and a lightning-wielding warrior that probably inspired Mortal Kombat‘s Raiden, Big Trouble In Little China is a fun slice of 80s action.

Unfortunately, the film was not appreciated when it was first released.  Stung by the critical reaction to the film, Carpenter abandoned working for the studios and instead become an  independent filmmaker.  Big Trouble In Little China, however, has stood the test of time and has become better appreciated with age.  Today, it’s rightly viewed as one of Carpenter’s best films.