Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

If you took the gag from Star Wars (1977) where Han Solo cockily chases the stormtroopers and then panics because there are actually too many, and turned that energy into an entire movie, you’d have Big Trouble in Little China . Indeed, possibly no movie hero has ever peacocked more convincingly but accomplished less than truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), whose friends Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and Egg Shen (Victor Wong) lead the battle against the demon lord of the San Francisco underworld.

Directed by John Carpenter during one of the great filmmaking hot streaks of all time, Big Trouble is a rarely seen kind of action comedy—neither spoof nor satire and containing not a single moment of genuine sentiment. On the one hand, Carpenter takes t

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