Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Variety
"...[The] costuming, sets, stunts and special visual effects by Richard Edlund are particularly lavish..." 07/02/1986

Chicago Sun-Times 6 of 10
It seems at first like a great idea: a big-budget, high-tech Hollywood action picture that takes all the cliches of kung fu, Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, and does them right. "Big Trouble in Little China" begins with the notion that the visible part of Chinatown is just the tip of the iceberg - that once you penetrate the facade of chop-suey parlors and laundries, there is a vast subterranean network of temples and dungeons, caverns and throne rooms and torture chambers. "Big Trouble in Little China" takes its hero and his friend on a toboggan ride through one death-defying challenge after another, and throws in magicians, sorcerers, karate masters and a 2,000-year-old man...Like I say, it must have seemed like a great idea. And the first 30 minutes of the movie gave me lots of room for hope. It was fast-moving, it was visually spectacular, it was exotic and lighthearted and filled with a spirit of adventure. But then, gradually, the movie began to recycle itself. It began to feel as if I was seeing the same thing more than once. After one amazing subterranean chamber had been survived and conquered, everybody fell down a chute into another one. By the end of the movie, I was just plain weary..."Big Trouble in Little China" was directed by John Carpenter, who has specialized in special-effects movies. He made "The Thing," "Escape from New York" and "Christine," but his best movie in recent years has been "Starman," the one with Jeff Bridges as the outer-space alien learning to be a human being. "Starman" was so good because it told a story that involved interesting characters. Special effects all by themselves aren't enough. - Roger Ebert
 
PopMatters 7 of 10
Like anyone in the film industry, director John Carpenter has had his professional ups and downs. His first feature, Dark Star (1974), progressed from a USC student project to a drive-in attraction. His breakthrough release, Halloween (1978), remains one of the most ruthlessly efficient genre exercises ever made, as well as one of the most financially lucrative independent features of all time. However, on more than one occasion, Carpenter has suffered from the collision between his creative instincts and whims of the movie-going audience. He either misread the public consciousness or attempted to lead it into territories it was unable or unwilling to explore...This was most notably the case with Carpenter's version of the science fiction classic, The Thing (1982)...The other occasion on which Carpenter was inadvertently out of step with the public taste involved the 1986 feature Big Trouble in Little China. An elaborate, effects-laden studio release, it was a commercial bomb...More than likely, it was this implicit critique of cinematic conventions of masculinity that turned off much of the audience when the film was originally released. The mid-1980s was the heyday of Rambo and the Terminator, characters rooted in certitude and absent even the slightest taint of irony. Carpenter's films have often incorporated a political dimension, obviously an implicit matter in this deliberately adolescent free-for-all. Jack Burton is the anti hunk, the inverse of the pectorally endowed fighting machines typified by Stallone and Schwarzenegger. The Occidental characters in Big Trouble in Little China are typically two steps behind, while the Asian Americans are three steps ahead. There are not many films that engage in a debate over Orientalism while incorporating a character who shoots lightning bolts from his fingers. - David Sanjek