DAY 26: Jackie Chan!

By 1997, New Line Cinema had already given western audiences a taste of the good stuff with Rumble in the Bronx, and they were desperate for more. Enter Mr. Nice Guy, a movie that feels less like a cohesive cinematic narrative and more like a beautifully chaotic, live-action Saturday morning cartoon. It’s got a plot thin enough to see through, but when you have the legendary Sammo Hung behind the camera directing his old China Drama Academy brother, who cares about a plot?

The setup is pure, glorious nonsense. Jackie Chan plays… Jackie, a celebrity TV chef living in Melbourne, Australia, who whips up crepes and smiles for the cameras. Meanwhile, a tough-as-nails investigative reporter named Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) grabs video footage of a massive cocaine deal going sideways between a traditional suits-and-shades Italian mob and a colorful street gang called The Demons. What is this, Nightmare Beach? Naturally, she gets spotted, guns start blazing, and she bolts into the busy streets.

Diana literally runs into Chef Jackie while he’s carrying a load of groceries. In the chaotic scuffle that follows, which features Jackie turning a market stall into a weaponized obstacle course, Diana’s incriminating VHS tape gets mixed up with a box of Jackie’s cooking show tapes. For the next 80 minutes, everyone in the Australian underworld is hunting down our favorite culinary master, leading to apartment explosions, kidnapping, a massive game of hide-and-seek on a construction site and some of the most ridiculous heavy-machinery destruction ever seen in a movie.

Fresh off breaking his ankle on Rumble in the Bronx, Jackie is back at peak physical agility here. He isn’t playing a super-cop this time. He’s just a regular guy who happens to be able to parkour off buildings and beat up six guys with a step-stool. He’s up against Richard Norton, who plays Giancarlo. The absolute MVP of the film, Norton is a legendary Australian martial artist and a massive staple of B-movie action, having starred in cult classics like Gymkata, Equalizer 2000 and Future Hunters. He frequently crossed over into Hong Kong cinema, playing the ultimate Western villain for Jackie and Sammo (see: Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars and City Hunter). He has an over-the-top, theatrical villainy, punctuating his threats by weirdly slapping his own henchmen with their ties.

This film was originally going to be the fifth installment of Jackie’s legendary Police Story franchise and was set to be shot in Sydney. At the last minute, the script was completely overhauled into a standalone piece, the setting shifted to Melbourne, and it became Jackie’s first movie filmed entirely in English.

If you think the movie is going to end with a standard one-on-one martial arts showdown, think again. The finale features Jackie hijacking a colossal, 120-ton mining dump truck with tires that look 12 feet high. He proceeds to drive this absolute monster directly through Giancarlo’s multi-million dollar mansion, flattening a fleet of pristine luxury sports cars (including a white Lamborghini) into pancakes.

The Arrow Video release features a brand new 4K (2160p) Ultra HD presentation in Dolby Vision and HDR10, sourced directly from the original camera negative. This release preserves multiple versions of the film across different discs, including the original Hong Kong cut, the Japanese cut and the New Line Cinema international theatrical cut. Extras include commentary by critic James Mudge; Breakout! Part 5, a new featurette in which stuntman Mars and critics David West and James Mudge look back at the film; Nice Thoughts, a new appreciation by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng; outtakes; a trailer and an image gallery. You can get it from MVD.