Thunderbolt - Sfida mortale

As review title says, this is one of Jackie Chan's weak movies if not the weakest. Nowhere near to the legendary Police Story 1-2! The action scenes are weak, characters are not complex enough, story is poor, etc. Race scenes are very mixed. Some scenes are very good, but others are very poor. Especially those 2x-3x speed scenes make the movie not so good. And there is a fight scene with a very bad effect (some kind of slow-mo, but looks awfull). I'm sad to say this, I like a lot of Chan movies, but this one is a must-skip.

I read somewher that Jackie was still recovering from injuries during this film's shooting, and it's blatantly obvious he is doubled extensively in the fight scenes--the great garage fight features a closeup of this guy's face! You can tell it's not quite him in the pachinko parlor sequence, too. Also, not much chemistry in my opinion between Jackie and Anita Yuen. Fortunately this doesn't hurt too much.

Now the good: Doubled or not, the fight scenes are absolutely great! I almost prefer the earlier garage fight though. They're serious and pretty tough, with the great choreography you'd expect. The serious tone of the film is great, too, you can see Jackie act, and do something different, and I think he pulls it off very well, as usual in his less comedic films. And Michael Wong is just the coolest! I love this guy, he's suave, funny, and good with the action scenes. Always a pleasure to see him, even in trash like "Knock off." I like the villain, too though he's unintentionally funny from time to time. This one's got a darker edge, and a good pace, with the fight scenes i mentioned. One of my favorites, actually.

This is another action-packed movie starring Jackie Chan, where he plays expert mechanic Chan Foh To who runs a small business in Hong Kong with his father and two sisters. He also helps the police weed out cars that were illegally upgraded, including one driven by street racer Warner Krugerman (Thorsten Nickel). After escaping jail, Krugerman seeks revenge on Foh by trashing his business and kidnapping his sisters, betting to race with Foh.

The acting was OK and the movie features an all-star cast, including cameo appearances by Coren Yuen, Collin Chau, Fui-On Shing and Kar-Lok Chin. Anita Yuen plays a great leading lady opposite Jackie Chan and Chan himself did some of his wildest and adrenaline-pumping martial arts moves, taking on one bad guy after the other. The most wild, and what I thought overkill, action scene is when Krugerman and his goons literally upends Foh's business while he and his father and sisters are caught in the mayhem. Lots of action follow afterward, including a long and somewhat drawn-out race car scenes.

There a little chemistry between Chan and Yuen, but it wasn't elaborated upon much. There are some drama here and there about Chan struggles in trying to overcoming the odds in defeating the villain and getting his sisters back.

Despite much of the exciting action sequences, overall, there isn't much of a suspenseful plot in the film and the story is somewhat predictable.

Grade C+

First off, I found the plot a bit problematic at times. Not atypical for a Chinese movie, no offense to the Chinese movie makers intended.

As a race fan, the auto racing scene did not look realistic to me much of the time. I read that they drove at slower speeds and sped up the film, which is exactly what it looks like. They are going way too fast for sports cars in some scenes.

Besides the excess speed, the cars are not smooth. Skilled race drivers are not driving all over the track - that would obviously cause you to lose time, and probably control :) Not a big deal maybe to a general audience, but people familiar with racing will notice it.

Some of the fighting scenes were pretty good, as expected. I did not feel my time was wasted. I just wish they had done the racing in a more realistic way.

I'm a die hard Jackie Chan fan, but "Thunderbolt" is, along with "Battle Creek Brawl/The Big Brawl" and "Cannonball Run" the worst of Jackie Chan's movies.

When you sit down to watch a Jackie Chan movie, what do you expect? Cunning stunts, cool fighting scenes, slapstick, silly comedy etc etc. There are two, maybe three fighting scenes in "Thunderbolt" and they're pretty good. But the stunts aren't much to cheer for, the only thing we get is crashing cars and car chases. Which I totally despise. And there aren't a lot of comedy either. The lack of comedy, that I can live with. Because after all, this is more of a serious film, which isn't a bad thing at all, since Jackie gets a chance to prove to everyone that he really can act and that he's not just a Cantonese Buster Keaton clone with a big nose.

The second thing I have a big problem with the directing and the camera work. Gordon Chan (a relative?) does a pretty bad job directing, using lots of close ups and fast cuts, which makes it hard to get a grip of what's really happening. He should take a close look at what Jackie did as a director, especially in "The Armour Of God" and "Operation Condor". Also, trying to make slow motion sequences by simply slowing down 24 frames/sec footage... Not a good idea. It'll look like crap, to be blunt. It would have looked a lot better with at least 48 frames per second.

This might seem very pedantic, but I'm afraid these little details ruined the movie for me, although the all the actors did great jobs. Sorry.