Tag Archives: Jackie Chan

Brad reviews KARATE KID: LEGENDS (2025), starring Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’m a huge fan of the 1984 film, THE KARATE KID. The stars aligned perfectly for my lifelong love affair. I was 10 or 11 years old, and my family had recently purchased our first VCR when the movie was released on VHS tape. I’ll never forget that first viewing. It was one of the most exhilarating films I had ever watched, and it’s fair to say that I literally wanted to be the karate kid. I was also smitten with Elizabeth Shue as the kid’s girlfriend, “Ali with an I!” I’m still infatuated with her to this day. I watched THE KARATE KID PART II (1986) and THE KARATE KID PART III (1989) at the movie theater, especially enjoying Part II, although I did miss the beautiful Ali. For a short, skinny guy from Toad Suck, Arkansas, the story of a skinny kid getting the best of the much stronger bullies was irresistible to me. The strong relationship between Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) gives the stories so much heart, which makes the rousing finales even more emotionally satisfying. I didn’t care so much for THE NEXT KARATE KID (1994) where Hillary Swank stepped in as the kid. Even with the return of Mr. Miyagi, I wasn’t very interested in a movie that didn’t feature the character of Daniel LaRusso. 

After being away for sixteen years, THE KARATE KID was given new life in 2010 when it was rebooted with Jackie Chan as the martial arts master and Jaden Smith as his bullied student. I wasn’t that interested in watching it due to the presence of Jaden Smith, but I ended up watching it because I love Jackie Chan. It didn’t make a lasting impact on me, but I must admit that I did end up enjoying the film. Then when the T.V. series COBRA KAI came out in 2018 with William Zabka and Ralph Macchio in the leads, I was immediately taken back to my teenage years, and I loved it all over again. I especially loved how the series brought back so many of the characters from the first three movies, including my beloved Ali! The series paid homage to the original 80’s films, which satisfied old farts like me, while introducing a bunch of new teenagers and drama that brought in a whole new audience. I was so happy the “karate kid” world was back in my life. 

Which brings us to KARATE KID: LEGENDS (2025), a movie that blends the world of the original KARATE KID and COBRA KAI, with Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso, with the world created in the KARATE KID reboot starring Jackie Chan as Master Han. When I first saw the trailer for “Legends” that features LaRusso and Master Han working together to train the young Li Fong, I knew it was a movie I wanted to see. The plot is nothing new as kung fu prodigy Fong (Ben Wang), haunted by his brother’s tragic death, relocates from Beijing to New York City with his mom (Ming-Na Wen). Forbidden from fighting by his protective mother, Li meets and starts falling for his classmate Mia (Sadie Stanley). Unfortunately for Li, Mia’s ex-boyfriend turns out to be a badass karate bully named Conor (Aramis Knight), who proceeds to demonstrate his skills with fists to Fong’s face and kicks to Fong’s torso. With the contrived help of a wise-cracking Master Han and an emotionally earnest Sensei LaRusso, Fong enters the “5 Boroughs Fighting Tournament” to settle the score with Conor and prove that he’s all the man that Mia will ever need.

I liked KARATE KID: LEGENDS. The pure nostalgia of watching Daniel LaRusso show his love for Mr. Miyagi by sharing the master’s teachings with Li Fong is quite satisfying for me. Adding to that feel-good vibe is the opportunity to see Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan working together on screen. The legendary Chan may be over 70 years old, but he’s still fun and energetic. And Ralph Macchio still seems to be defying the aging process. At 63 years of age when filming KARATE KID: LEGENDS, Macchio is twelve years older than Pat Morita was when he starred as Mr. Miyagi in the original 1984 film. That fact is amazing to me. And the familiar storyline of an underdog standing up to a bully is engaging no matter how many times we’ve seen it before. With fight choreography that’s both acrobatic and bone-crunching at times, as well as a running time of just over an hour and a half, director Jonathan Entwistle delivers a fast, easy-to-watch, and entertaining film. With that said, KARATE KID: LEGENDS does have some issues. Primarily, I wanted more Chan and Macchio. A lot of the film’s run-time focuses on Li Fong’s move to New York, his blossoming relationship with Mia (and her dad), his troubles at school and with the bully, as well as the tragedy of his brother. By the time Chan and Macchio start training him, a big part of the movie is over. Since they’re the main reason I wanted to watch the film, that was a little disappointing. Also, the relationship between Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san is so important in the original films, but this movie misses that part completely between Li Fong and either of his teachers, Master Han or Sensei LaRusso. Without an emotional connection being created in this film, the overall impact is blunted for new viewers who aren’t bringing in 40 years of nostalgia with them.

Overall, I’m happy I spent an hour and a half of my life revisiting the world of THE KARATE KID. This film itself may not bring in a lot of new fans, but it offers tons of fan service to old timers like me.

Brad’s “Trailer of the Day” – THE SHADOW’S EDGE (2025), starring Jackie Chan!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I ran across a trailer for Jackie Chan’s latest movie today. It has a few things (other than Jackie) that really intrigue me…

  1. Veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka-Fai looks cool and sorta badass!
  2. There seems to be some violent knife play.
  3. Yu Rongguang (The Iron Monkey) is in the cast.

This seems to be more hardcore than some of Chan’s more recent outings. Enjoy my friends!

A Scene That I Love: Jack Chan and Jackie Chan Fight Bandits In Twin Dragons

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Last night, I watched the #FridayNightFlix presentation of Twin Dragons.  Jack Chan played twin brothers who shared a psychic link.  One of them is a composer and the other is street racer and martial artist.  In this scene, the two brothers team up to fight off a group of bandits.  Double the Jackie means double the action!

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for TWIN DRAGONS (1992)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

This Friday, June 20th, at 9 pm CT, join my wife Sierra and I as we guest host for Lisa, and she continues to enjoy her vacation! We’ll be watching TWIN DRAGONS (1992), starring not just 1, but 2 Jackie Chans! It’s available on Prime!

I’ve included the trailer below!

Brad’s Scene of the Day features Jackie Chan in PROJECT A (1983)! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Jackie Chan is a truly unique talent. He’s one of my all time favorites, and rates his own section in my massive physical media collection. On Jackie’s 71st birthday, and my granddaughter’s day of birth, I share this incredible bicycle chase featuring some fun Jackie stunts and ending with Sammo Hung. Enjoy my friends! 

RUSH HOUR – 1998, a special year for this fan of Hong Kong action cinema!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

1998 was certainly a special year for me as a fan of Hong Kong cinema but first let me provide a little context… After 150 years of British rule, Hong Kong was being handed over to communist China on July 1, 1997. This left a lot of uncertainty in Hong Kong’s local film industry. Because of that uncertainty, many of Hong Kong’s most popular filmmakers decided it was time to take their talents abroad. Director John Woo had already left for America in the early 90’s and had made successful films like HARD TARGET, BROKEN ARROW and FACE/OFF. This gets us to 1998, the year that many of Hong Kong’s biggest action stars would release their first American films. Chow Yun-fat would reprise his popular, honorable hitman role in his first American film, THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS, which was produced by John Woo and directed by Antoine Fuqua. Jet Li would make a strong impact as the badass villain in the 4th installment of the LETHAL WEAPON franchise. And then there’s Jackie Chan, probably the biggest of all the Hong Kong movie stars. Jackie had been banging around Hollywood as early as 1980 without a lot of fanfare in the west. But in 1996 Chan had a solid American box office hit when his Hong Kong production RUMBLE IN THE BRONX was dubbed and released in America. Armed with that success and a sizable budget provided by an American studio, Chan would get his own big release in 1998, the action-comedy RUSH HOUR!

In RUSH HOUR, Jackie Chan plays inspector Lee, a Hong Kong police detective who’s also a friend to Chinese Consul Han (Tzi Ma), currently serving in Los Angeles. When Consul Han’s daughter Soo Yung is kidnapped, he asks Lee to come to America to assist him and the FBI in rescuing her. The FBI doesn’t really want Lee’s help so they ask the Los Angeles police department to assign someone, anyone, to stay with Lee and keep an eye on him so he doesn’t get in the way of their investigation. Enter fast-talking, LAPD Detective James Carter. After some initial clashes and disagreements, the mismatched duo eventually begins working together to find the criminal mastermind behind the kidnapping, Juntao.

I watched RUSH HOUR at the movie theater on my birthday in 1998. I loved every second of it. A few weeks later I was on a business trip in Chicago, I told my boss how good the film was, and we went to see it as well. I enjoyed it just as much the 2nd time. I’m a big fan of “buddy cop” films like LETHAL WEAPON and BAD BOYS, and RUSH HOUR is an excellent addition to that sub-genre of action films. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have an excellent chemistry together. Their comedic interplay is hilarious and entertaining. It’s one of the main reasons I enjoy the movie so much. Jackie Chan was 44 years old when RUSH HOUR was released, but he was still extremely athletic so his brand of martial arts action and comedy still worked. The movie would go on to gross just short of $250 million at the worldwide box office and establish Jackie Chan as a bonafide star in the American film market. 2001’s RUSH HOUR 2 would be an even bigger hit, making almost $350 million worldwide. No one works harder or gives more of himself to his film productions than Jackie Chan, and it was nice seeing him achieve the truly worldwide success that he had earned! 

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Drunken Master!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents Jackie Chan in Drunken Master!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Drunken Master is available on Prime and Tubi!  See you there!

DRUNKEN MASTER – Jackie Chan gets soused!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

The first Hong Kong actor I ever heard of was Bruce Lee. After that, it was Jackie Chan. I remember in the mid-90’s when RUMBLE IN THE BRONX opened in America and became the number 1 movie at the box office on its opening weekend. Jackie Chan had been trying out for U.S. stardom since the early 80’s with BATTLE CREEK BRAWL, THE CANNONBALL RUN movies and THE PROTECTOR. Now, all of a sudden he was a hot property. Some of Chan’s older movies, like OPERATION CONDOR (1991), SUPERCOP (1992) and DRUNKEN MASTER (1994) were being dusted off the shelves and re-released in America. The entire world was witnessing just what an amazing talent Jackie Chan truly was. 

But long before he became a star in America, Jackie Chan was already one of the biggest stars in Asia. In DRUNKEN MASTER from 1978, Chan plays the martial arts hero Wong Fei-hung. Although Wong Fei-hung was a Chinese martial artist, physician & folk hero in real life, in DRUNKEN MASTER he’s played as a mischievous & arrogant young man who thinks he knows way more than he actually does. He’s such a pain in the butt that his dad, Master Wong, sends for his Uncle So to train him. Uncle So has a reputation as a master teacher who has been known to physically cripple his students in order to teach them the discipline it takes to learn his drunken kung fu. One day, after constantly rebelling against his uncle’s teaching, Wong escapes and runs into the mysterious assassin, Thunderleg. Not realizing who he’s dealing with, the disrespectful young man gets his ass kicked and is thoroughly humiliated. It’s so bad that he goes back to his uncle’s house and submits to his teaching. He finally realizes just how much he has to learn. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s also about this time that Thunderleg is commissioned to kill Master Wong. It seems a greedy guy named Mr. Lee wants access to land under Master Wong’s control for the sole purpose of removing its natural resources without regard for how it affects the other people in the area. When Master Wong says no, he unknowingly signs his death sentence. Will young Wong Fei-hung be able to learn the secrets of drunken kung fu in time to save his dad from the man who had soundly defeated him a short time ago? You’ll just have to watch and find out! 

Jackie Chan is amazing as Wong Fei-hung. I’ve read about the rigorous training and harsh conditions that Chan himself endured in the Peking opera school that he attended as a child and teenager. The positive from that difficult situation is that he learned a brand of acrobatics and martial arts that helped make him an international movie star. As a 24 year old at the time of filming DRUNKEN MASTER, he’s in peak physical condition. As great as he is in his later American movies like RUSH HOUR and SHANGHAI NOON, his athleticism is off the charts here. When you combine Chan’s physical talents with the martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping, you can expect special results. The fight scenes are the primary draw here and they deliver. There’s a reason that filmmakers like the Wachowski’s, Ang Lee & Quentin Tarantino would ask Yuen Woo-ping to choreograph the martial arts in movies like THE MATRIX, CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, and the KILL BILL’s. 

DRUNKEN MASTER would be a huge financial success and its combination of action and comedy would be the blueprint for success throughout the rest of Jackie Chan’s career. It’s one of the best of its kind. 

Film Review: Rumble in the Bronx (dir by Stanley Tong)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1995, Rumble in the Bronx is known for two things.

First off, it’s the film that finally made Jackie Chan a star in America.  Chan had been an international star for two decades before starring in this film but he had initially struggled to break into the American film industry.  Before Rumble in the Bronx, no one in Hollywood was quite sure what to do with an actor who was both skilled at martial arts and who also had perfect comedic timing.  Indeed, the very title of  Rumble in the Bronx seems to designed to make Americans feel comfortable with the film.  Jackie Chan may have been from Hong Kong and the film itself may have been dubbed and it may have been released internationally before New Line got around to releasing it in the States but it was a film about the Bronx!  And what’s more American than the Bronx?

Except, of course, Rumble in the Bronx wasn’t filmed in the Bronx.  The other thing for which this film is remembered was that it may have taken place in the Bronx but it was filmed in Vancouver.  From the minute the audience sees Jackie walking through this film’s version of the Bronx, it’s pretty obvious that he’s in Canada.  All of the extras are very polite.  The city streets are surprisingly clean.  Even the graffiti is rather mild in tone.  (Reportedly, the production spray-painted the locations every morning and then cleaned up all the graffiti at night.)  When the film shows us its version of an NYPD stationhouse, the building is so neat and clean that it seems like it should be in a Canadian tourism brochure.  New York has never looked more inviting than when it was played by Vancouver.

Of course, the main giveaway that this film was shot in Canada was that there are mountains in the background.  Majestic mountain ranges are one of the few things that you cannot find in New York City.  When the bad guys drive someone out of the city so that they can threaten him, they end up in front of an absolutely gorgeous mountain stream.  Seriously, I’m sure I’m not the only person who wanted to travel to Canada after watching Rumble in the Bronx.

But, hey …. it’s a Jackie Chan movie!  If you can’t suspend your disbelief while watching a Jackie Chan movie then when can you suspend it?  The film’s plot is not terribly complex.  Jackie plays a Hong Kong cop who comes to New York for his uncle’s wedding.  While his uncle is on his honeymoon, Jackie looks over his uncle’s store and protects it from the local gang.  Jackie also befriends Nancy (Francoise Yip) and her wheelchair-bound brother, Danny (Morgan Lam).  Both Nancy and Danny need someone to look out for them and to encourage both of them to reject the seedier temptations of the Bronx.  They also need Jackie to protect them from the golf-loving crime lord, White Tiger (Kris Lord).

The plot is mostly an excuse for a series of increasingly elaborate fights and stunts.  As always, it’s fun to not only watch Jackie Chan in action but to also try to spot all the moments in which he nearly killed himself performing his own stunts.  Rumble in the Bronx is the film in which Jackie Chan broke his ankle while jumping onto a hoverboat.  One can actually see the ankle bending at an extremely awkward angle.  I actually covered my eyes when I realized what was happening because it was obviously very painful.  If anyone had any doubt of how painful it was, Jackie included footage of him howling in pain during the end credits.  That said, as painful as it was to watch Jackie’s ankle snap, it doesn’t change the fact that this film’s finale actually involves a hovercraft!  Even without Jackie’s stunts, the action in this film’s finale would be enjoyably and shamelessly over the top.  But knowing that Jackie was out there risking his life to make the film makes it all the more enjoyable.  And it also helps that Jackie Chan is a legitimately good actor, one who gets a lot of laughs out of the fact that the characters that he plays are often as shocked by some of the things that he does (and survives) as the audience is.

Myself and a few others watched Rumble in the Bronx on Friday as a part of our weekly #FridayNightFlix get-together.  We had a blast.  Another film that we recently watched for #FridayNightFlix, Escape From The Bronx, is famous for its line of “It is time to leave the Bronx”  but you know what?  Why would anyone ever want to leave beautiful Vancouver?

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Rumble In The Bronx!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1995’s Rumble in the Bronx!

Jackie Chan takes on the Bronx!  And wouldn’t you know it, the Bronx looks a lot like Canada!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Rumble in The Bronx is available on Prime!  See you there!