Disc Reviews

Big Trouble In Little China Blu-ray Review

• 19th Dec 2013

It’s been several years since I jumped on board the ‘Pork Chop Express’ with wanna-be-hero Jack Burton and actual-hero Wang Chi. Despite the fact that I had previously watched John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China to death on VHS in the 90s and again on the 2001 2-disc special edition DVD; I had been waiting for the inevitable high definition re-master. “Why so inevitable?!” I hear you cry. Well, because it’s a ‘cult’ movie and true cult movies tend to get the epic special edition treatment eventually. This disc is no exception.

Twentieth Century Fox have gone all out with a beautifully crisp 2.35:1 restoration and 5.1 DTS audio. There’s also a decent chunk of new special features – mostly new interviews with Carpenter himself and members of the cast and crew.

For anyone silly enough not to have seen BTiLC, the movie follows mulleted trucker Jack Burton (Russell) and his friend Wang Chi (Dun) on their mission to rescue Chi’s kidnapped fiancee Miao Yin (Pai) from the clutches of an evil immortal sorcerer named David Lo Pan (Hong). When Burton’s truck is impounded by Lo Pan’s gang and Gracie Law (Cattrall) – Burton’s love interest – is also captured the duo assemble a team of China Town locals comprised of an old wizard and a handful of Chang Sing warriors and descend below the streets and do battle with Lo Pan and his henchmen.

Kurt Russell turns in my personal favourite performance of his career – a swaggering caricature of his proverbial action hero; a sort of underachieving twin brother of his Escape From New York alter-ego Snake Plissken. Carpenter and Russell boldly took the character of Burton in an unflattering direction that whilst unpopular at the time has gone on to become the quintessential blundering macho-man, too egocentric to realize that he’s not the hero. The scene where he squares up to Lo Pan still smeared with bright red lipstick from kissing Gracie Law in the previous scene is simply priceless.

The rest of the cast also measure up well. Cattrall’s Gracie, Dun’s Wang Chi and Victor Wong’s Egg Shen all do their bit to lighten the tone amongst the ghosts and ghouls, but it’s James Hong’s Lo Pan who steals the show for me. As a kid I was genuinely terrified of Lo Pan: not old wheelchair-bound Lo Pan you understand, but the green skinned, float-across-the-floor-with-frickin’-light-shining-out-of-my-eyes-and-mouth Lo Pan. He’s visually stunning and terrifying, yet upon watching the film with my adult eyes I find him absolutely hilarious. Hong’s absurdly chattering, twitchy lunacy of a performance is pantomimic, true, but it fits the tone of the movie’s comic genius.

As for the disc itself it delivers on all counts. The transfer is superb with an excellent picture and crystal clear audio. Although as is the case with all modern theatrical anamorphic pictures the 2:35.1 ratio will letterbox on many televisions (such as mine) with a 16:9 (1:78.1) screen. I’ve often found with movies produced in the pre digital audio age that the soundtrack transfer tends to be a little awkward with either a forced unnatural surround sound experience or simply no remastering whatsoever resulting in a great picture with an audio track that sounds like a cassette tape that’s been chewed by the dog. Thankfully this isn’t the case here. There’s definitely been some restorative production work done on the master tape resulting in a bold, loud and rich sonic experience to annoy your neighbors with!

Special feature-wise all of what was originally included on the 2001 DVD release remains on the Blu Ray. Including (thankfully) Russell and Carpenter’s original commentary which is still just as awesome as it was the last time I heard it. Additionally there’s some very welcome new interviews with a humble and likeable John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Director of Photography Dean Cundey – both of which which shed some light on the reasons for the movie’s poor box office performance upon it’s original release – and producer Larry Franco and stuntman Jeff Iamada.

All in all it’s an excellent package and well deserving of a film as good as this. It’s not my all-time favourite Carpenter film – that prestigious award goes to The Thing – but you’d be silly not to add this one to the collection!

It’s all in the reflexes.

Sean Kennedy