Mr. Nice Guy: Bom de Briga

Thin on plot and fat with exciting stunts, Jackie Chan's "Mr. Nice Guy" is more like a speedy carnival ride than a movie. Chan plays a television chef who gets mixed up with a female reporter with an incriminating videotape that drug lords are after. Along the way Jackie Chan has his prerequisite close calls and death defying stunts mixed with his affable humor. All the stunts are good ones and there's a set-piece that requires Chan to escape his enemy in an unfinished building where all the blue doors are already installed that is my favorite. It's quite a farce having people opening and closing doors in pursuit and escape and never knowing who or what's behind the next door. One extended scene is a guilty pleasure for me and involves Chan commandeering a large earth moving vehicle and wreaking havoc with it. When I say large, I mean LARGE. The tires alone must be 12 feet tall in and of themselves. It's pretty cool to see the devastation this vehicle incurs. A fun film. Had the plot itself been a bit more thickened my rating would've been higher.

This film is certainly not an Academy Award Winner, but it most definitely is just a plain old good action film with tons of senseless fighting. The fighting is incredible in this film and the stunts are quite impressive, the choreography and the stunts are what make this film good, don't expect a great story or any great acting.

The story isn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be, it's actually quite interesting and takes a little bit of step aside from Jackie Chan's typical cop character. This time he's simply a TV chef that gets mixed up in things against his will. It sounds pretty stupid, but it's not all that bad.

The acting and even more so, the dialogue are two things that I'm not even going to begin to defend. The acting is pretty bad at times and the dialogue is god-awful! Sadly, a lot of the bad dialogue could easily have been avoided, I don't know what the writers/director was thinking.

Virtually all of the cast members were new faces to me, with of course, the exception of Jackie Chan. Jackie does a good job with his role, exactly what you would expect from one of his films. I feel I have to mention Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, what a beautiful actress!!! And she's actually a pretty good actress, I'll definitely be keeping an eye open for her future work.

If you are a fan of Martial Art films, or just like Jackie Chan, then watch this movie. Just watch this film thinking you are going to have a fun time watching Jackie kick some bad-guy butt! I hope you enjoy the film, thanks for reading,

-Chris

This movie is a strange combination: quite possibly the thinnest plot and worst acting of any Jackie Chan movie... and some of the best and funniest fight scenes, as well.

Fortunately the movie moves along briskly and there's never much time between humor and fight scenes for you to dwell on just how bad the acting was in the preceeding scene.

The thinnest plot imaginable (1: Bad guys think Jackie has an incriminating tape, 2: Bad guys go after him), but it doesn't matter; the movie serves up one virtuoso action sequence after another, and some priceless comic dialogue as well ("Oh my God, you want the tape too? If you find it PLEASE take it"). Jackie was 43 when this was filmed, but he sure hadn't lost a bit of his physical dexterity. This film is much better in every way than his American "breakthrough" hit, "Rumble In The Bronx", and Richard Norton makes an enjoyable villain. (***)

You have to have kind of a high threshold for silliness (and bad acting) to enjoy this one. The plot's almost nonexistent, but it's got some good (little) fight scenes and stunts....A little disappointing, though, that Jackie doesn't get to fight lead villain Richard Norton, quite a good fighter (see "City Hunter.") The ending's pretty funny though. Probably the most "Turn off your brain, and enjoy" Jackie film since "Rumble in the Bronx," it delivers fun, plain and simple.