Thursday, December 24, 2020

Big Trouble In Little China (John Carpenter, 1986)



There are many multi-genre movies, but none of them gets even close to the brilliance and roaring imagination of Big Trouble In Little China. An action fantasy martial arts comedy... I really wonder how John Carpenter thought of that? Big Trouble In Little China is a movie that is definitely the cheese cake of the genre fanatic. It has everything from monsters, till martial arts experts flying, till demons and enough brawls to keep you awake all night. But the one thing that really astonishes the spectator is how this outrageous story is covered by the silk glove of comedy. There is nothing serious in the movie, yet you as a spectator you take it dead serious. The main character is the epitome of satire of the male stereotype in action movies, yet you identify with him much more than if it was a stereotypical kind of hero. The humour in that movie seems to polish everything, seems to smooth its rough edges. Big Trouble In Little China is one of the movies that have no shame when it comes to their story and they have no shame in presenting a totally unbelievable mishmash of ideas, events and occurrences that seem to put the spectator in a state of utter bafflement. What is going on in that picture? There is no answer. The answer is simply watch and leave the other questions unanswered. The chaos that this picture pictures makes it one of the examples where the screenplay has long now left earth and it is travelling with light speed for other universes. Big Trouble In Little China is definitely a film that you really love to watch over and over again. There is that immense innocence in that movie, that feeling that you are watching a highly demented fairy tale. I really don't know how to put it better, the movie really leaves no room for talking, it is definitely a movie that goes for the absurd and the one that really leaves you speechless. Big Trouble In Little China is one of the proudest members of the 80s decade, a movie that couldn't have been made in another period of time, because there is so much campiness in that film that you bet your ass that it came from the 80s. Big Trouble In Little China is a masterpiece of genre cinema, a masterpiece of highly sophisticated humour and a movie that seems to understand the outrageous character of action based movies and it exploits it more than you can ever imagine. 

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