Thunderbolt: Ação Sobre Rodas

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+

One of the most important things in a Jackie Chan movie is the direction. It is important for us, the viewer, to be able to clearly see what's going on. If we can't then we might've just rented a generic Steven Seagal-type martial arts movie because the fights in those movies are completely incomprehensible as well.

So then. This movie has some great car-chases and relevant crashes, it has some amazing fight-scenes and a few really cool stunts. Most of it is completely lost due to crap direction. We get slow-motion photography at totally inappropriate moments (in one case even during the middle of a fight) and occasionally we even get an effect that shows 6 frames per second instead of 24. The fact that the camera is always about 5 inches away from the action doesn't help matters.

All in all, it would've been a great movie if it was possible to figure out what was happening on-screen. Pity.

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.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it, but I'd much rather watch a better Chan film, such as "Police Story" or "Legend of Drunken master." The Story was good, and the racing was an interesting Idea, but I don't think there were enough fights, and even when there were fights, bad camera work made it impossible to see what was going on. one good thing about the movie, there was one shootout scene, and it was awesome! This one is a good "Renter" but not a "Buyer." If your a fan of Jackie Chan, you need to see this movie, but don't buy it without seeing it first. This is one of the only Jackie Chan films I won't buy, unless I have a lot of money to spare, and i'm in a store with the DVD in front of me.

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.