Thunderbolt (1995) August 16, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Action, 1990s films , trackbackDirector: Gordon Chan Main Cast: Jackie Chan; Anita Yuen; Thorsten Nickel; Michael Wong Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Golden Harvest
“I saw this movie very shortly after its Asian release, and no amount of banging my head against a brick wall will allow me to forget this fact.
Fellow Brits of a certain age will remember a fellow called Benny Hill, and the silly sped-up chases that he used to perform. This film is pretty much like that (except it’s supposed to be deadly serious and there are no saucy, scantily-clad women involved). I’d give anything to erase all memory of this film from my mind. I’d even watch The Medallion again (twice, if necessary) if I could, just once, sleep the whole night through without waking up screaming, “This is the man that gave us Police Story! This is the man that gave us Project A! Hell, even his Lo Wei films were better than this!” while images of dumbly undercranked cars run feebly across my mind.
Suffice to say, this was not one of the more accomplished films in Jackie Chan’s career. Surprisingly, at the time of writing, no sequel has been planned.”
The above review of this film appears on the HKMDB, and if you don’t already recognise the “style” of the writing, it’s one of my contributions. Thunderbolt has always been a bit of a watershed film for me, and something that made me finally realise that Jackie Chan was no longer a god of action cinema. I despised the film with a passion and truly wanted it to go away and never be mentioned again. Although the above review was intended to be humorous, I did genuinely feel offended and betrayed by the film.
Almost thirteen years passed between my first viewing and the one I sat through recently to write this review. A lot has changed in the world, and in my own personal life. Thunderbolt is a film I always knew I’d have to come back to sooner or later, so do I still hate it?
The answer is curiously no, and I’m not sure what that means, if anything. True, it’s still as dumb as a bag of spanners. The plot makes no real sense at all, the undercranked race at the end is still silly (although not as bad as I remember it and I now understand the mitigating circumstances behind it), it’s almost completely devoid of humour, the gunfight is too violent and seems out of place in a Jackie Chan movie, the acting by the English language cast is truly abominable and Michael Wong definitely calls Jackie “Jackie” at one point (his name of the character in the film is “Foh”). And that’s not even mentioning the extensive doubling (Jackie was still injured from Rumble in the Bronx and couldn’t perform as much as usual), a fact I wasn’t even aware of when I watched this on grainy ol’ VHS first time around.
But the crucial fact remains: I just couldn’t whip up any hatred for Thunderbolt. And I sat through it quite happily, much to my surprise. That’s not to say I enjoyed it all that much, but I can see how it might have made a decent film had certain things gone differently. The aforementioned undercranked race finale was a victim of circumstance when the filming moved from Japan to Malaysia and the team were forbidden to race at speed. This has resulted in the now-infamous silly ending to the movie. The whole sequence is weirdly surreal anyway, with some major accidents going off all over the place on the track and nobody seeming to find it worthy of comment or stepping in to stop the race. And the practice of putting a pit-stop timer on-screen breaks the fourth wall as far as I’m concerned – attempting to make the film appear like a televised race is a major mistake.
The haphazard and highly implausible story follows Foh, an upstanding member of society who happens to be good at fighting and racing, who ultimately gets challenged by “Cougar” (Nickel) to race when he kidnaps Foh’s sisters. And that’s pretty much it, although the film takes the best part of ninety minutes to even get around to thinking about a climax. Nickel’s acting is truly dreadful, and I’m pretty sure no one’s going to disagree with me on that point. It’s always the same in these “international” productions when Chinese directors direct dialogue in English – it just doesn’t work out.
On the plus side, the early car sequences are actually pretty decent – although not really what the average Jackie Chan fan was looking for in a movie in the mid 90’s. The Sammo Hung directed fight scenes are pared down to a certain extent, but what’s here is pretty good. In this age of digital media it’s pretty easy to spot where Jackie was doubled, but he does do some of his own stuff. Hung seems intent on blurring the action and producing very short, choppy action scenes, presumably to hide the fact that the star wasn’t present during some sequences, and this does seem quite un Sammo-like. That said, the Pachinko parlour scene is quite watchable, with Jackie going head to head with his own stunt crew and a group of near-naked Yakuza.
The fact that I’ve even noticed that Thunderbolt has some redeeming qualities is saying something, although I’d still prefer any of his 90’s films over this one (except perhaps First Strike). If you’re after, say, a Jackie Chan film that’s serious, you will be far better off with the superior Crime Story. And as for my comments about The Medallion, well, it’s funny you should ask…
Comments»
I watched Thunderbolt many years ago and I can’t remember anything about it at all other than it involved cars.
I recently bought First Strike on DVD and was severely disappointed, it was nothing like I remembered it. Turned out that it was a US cut of the movie and few more plot holes than is usual for a Jackie Chan movie had crept in. My old VCD version is still on the shelf until I can pick up a proper cut on DVD.
The Medallion and Supercop (Police Story 3) suffers from the same problem, a pointless US cut. I can’t see the point in cutting these movies, only fans will buy them and they want their Jackie uncut.
Doh! I meant Accidental Spy and not The Medallion.
The Medallion is just plain bad.
The US cut of FIRST STRIKE is pretty unforgivable, and you’re right - it makes no sense at all. I have the Taiwanese DVD from “Funny” and it’s hardly an answer to the problem. Despite being uncut, it’s ALL dubbed into Mandarin (solving the bad acting by the Russian bloke but doing little else) and the transfer leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m reasonably happy with the Fortune Star DVD of Police Story 3, but the Universe DVD of Accidental Spy is another disappointment - a very poor transfer indeed.
I imagine executives somewhere think western audiences won’t sit through a film longer than 90 minutes and so we get these stupid cuts (Gorgeous and Who Am I? were badly affected too). It’s another example of industry big-wigs thinking nobody’s got an attention span of more than a few minutes.
Did not realise that Who Am I? and Gorgeous was cut. I bought both on VCD when I lived in Singapore, but did not notice any differences when I got my R2/R4 DVD versions.
I have investigated a bit and it looks like it will have to the Japanese version to go for with Who Am I? and the Hong Kong or Taiwan version for Gorgeous even though that is not anamorphic.
I’ll be through Hong Kong next year and I might see if new versions have been made available then.
I thought this blog was free, but now I’m going to have shell out some dough for some new DVDs.
I tried to sit through the shortened US cut of Gorgeous but it was really annoying me. In the US version Shu Qi just gets on a plane and goes. I thought it was really stupid.
I haven’t seen the US version of Who Am I?, but there’s a good 15 minutes missing. I really like Who Am I? and I’d imagine I’d be so annoyed I wouldn’t be able to watch it. The original versions are getting hard to come by now, as usual.
It’s all doom and gloom when it comes to these US versions of perfectly fine HK films. Hopefully they’ve lost interest now to some extent and are leaving them alone!
Luckily the Pachinko parlour is quite good. This movie is not. I disliked it (not as much as you and I like First Strike more) quite a bit. The horrendous undercranking annoyed me to no end. You don’t undercrank serious car action scenes (even in comedy they can be quite annoying; I hated the undercranking even in Death Race 2000). So much money spent crashing the vehicles, you think they could have just drove faster (I almost made the mistake of putting mph
) though yea they were “…a victim of circumstance when the filming moved from Japan to Malaysia and the team were forbidden to race at speed”.
Cannot disagree about the acting, don’t want to, ugh …
I did not hate the US cut of either Gorgeous or Who am I? though I know they will be improved when I watch the longer versions (most likely
). I will state my annoyances with them if I even do a review 
(I do own the longer release of Gorgeous; I know all about the important cameos). Luckily the US release of Gorgeous has the Jackie Chan commentary (which I haven’t went through, when I do, I’ll write notes 
).
I listened to the commentary on Gorgeous then threw the disc out. I’ll stick to the HK Universe DVD until something better comes along.
I’m currently doing a whole series of “lesser” JC movies (MEDALLION next, as hinted in the review!) but for some reason never considered doing FIRST STRIKE. Maybe next time…