Mr. Nice Guy

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.

In Melbourne, the Chinese Chef Jackie (Jackie Chan) has a successful show on television. The drug lord Giancarlo (Richard Norton) and his gang are dealing cocaine with The Demons gang, but they fight against each other. During the shooting, the snoopy reporter Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) and her partner are accidentally exposed and they flee with a VHS tape with the footage of the negotiation. On the street, she stumbles with Jackie and he helps her fighting against the gangsters. When they are escaping in his car, her tape accidentally mixes with other videotapes that Jackie has in a box on the backseat of his car. Jackie goes to his apartment and meets his girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee) while his nephews "borrow" the tape to watch. Meanwhile Giancarlo's gangsters are looking for the tape and abduct Miki. Jackie's friend Romeo (Vince Poletto), who is a police detective, chases the gangsters with other policemen while Jackie teams up with Diana and his friend Lakisha (Karen McLymont) to release Miki from Giancarlo.

"Yat goh ho yan", a.k.a. "Mr. Nice Guy", is a highly entertaining film with Jackie Chan in the lead role. The screenplay is the perfect combination of action and humor, with magnificent choreography. The final sequence with the huge mining vehicle is hilarious. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Mr. Nice Guy - Bom de Briga" ("Mr. Nice Guy – Good in Fight")

C'mon, all of you! Throw some more votes into the pot if you've seen enough out of everything! Jackie Chan's recent movies including MR. NICE GUY show their prescnce in the Hollywood mainstream thanks to a special ingredient: originality. Take your pick at RUMBLE IN THE BRONX and thereafter! Impressive and fast stunt choreography from TV chef Chan is astounding and well done, something that highly trained professionals have died for. Voices aren't dubbed this time around, but Chan's accent takes some learning. The touch of comedy is another welcome feature, making this one specially entertaining. Fat bicyclist steals the show for fighting back, and the end outtakes are a nice bonus. There are a couple of gripes, though. MR. NICE GUY tends to run the same route as R.I.T.B. from start to finish (like the giant truck finale), and it could have been less on stupidity, but as I said before, the comedy was welcome. More movies like this would (almost) put James Bond 007 in the retirement home! Another must-see for action buffs! Another must-have for the fan of Chan!

In my review of 'Who Am I?', I mentioned that 'Rumble in the Bronx', 'First Strike', 'Mr Nice Guy', and 'Who Am I?' all followed a similar formula as Jackie tried to capture western audiences. After watching 'Mr Nice Guy' again, I was actually kind of surprised to realize that it was almost a carbon copy of 'Rumble in the Bronx' - a Rumble in Melbourne's Central Business District, anyway.

Giancarlo (Richard Norton), Melbourne's top drug lord is angry because Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) has a tape that incriminates him. Jackie (Jackie Chan), a TV chef and arse-kicker extraordinaire comes into possession of the tape, making Giancarlo angry enough to kidnap Jackie's girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee). This makes Jackie angry. The end.

Wow. It seems like I've written out the whole plot and embellished upon it rather than summarized it. I'm just kidding - or am I? 'Mr Nice Guy' might be a contender for the thinnest plot in the universe prize, and the so called "supporting actors" don't even seem to be trying to act. Almost everything that happens in 'Rumble in the Bronx' is recycled for this. Unfortunately, the hovercraft was replaced by heavy machinery. Nothing can be an adequate substitute for Rumble's hovercraft.

Jackie kicking arse is the only reason for anyone to watch 'Mr Nice Guy'. It doesn't feature anything new or innovative, but any keen fan of Jackie should notice various 'Protector', 'Police Story' or 'Rumble in the Bronx' moments. It is a fun and exciting action film though, and that's what Jackie is all about.

And now for something completely different: Yet again, 'Mr Nice Guy' features Jackie playing a character called Jackie. I'm convinced that Jackie quit acting for several years, and took up a life as a cop, spy, chef, etc. All the while he had a film crew filming his adventures in order to create easy action movies. It's the only logical explanation - the writers can't be that lazy, right?

'Mr Nice Guy' reeks of being direct to video, but that doesn't stop it from being a fun action movie. Fans of Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung should give this a look - 7/10

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