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60 comments in total

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Action galore!!!, 16 January 2003

Author: LebowskiT1000 from Escondido, California, USA

This film is certainly not an Academy Award Winner, but it most definitely is just a plain old good action film with tons of senseless fighting. The fighting is incredible in this film and the stunts are quite impressive, the choreography and the stunts are what make this film good, don't expect a great story or any great acting.

The story isn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be, it's actually quite interesting and takes a little bit of step aside from Jackie Chan's typical cop character. This time he's simply a TV chef that gets mixed up in things against his will. It sounds pretty stupid, but it's not all that bad.

The acting and even more so, the dialogue are two things that I'm not even going to begin to defend. The acting is pretty bad at times and the dialogue is god-awful! Sadly, a lot of the bad dialogue could easily have been avoided, I don't know what the writers/director was thinking.

Virtually all of the cast members were new faces to me, with of course, the exception of Jackie Chan. Jackie does a good job with his role, exactly what you would expect from one of his films. I feel I have to mention Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, what a beautiful actress!!! And she's actually a pretty good actress, I'll definitely be keeping an eye open for her future work.

If you are a fan of Martial Art films, or just like Jackie Chan, then watch this movie. Just watch this film thinking you are going to have a fun time watching Jackie kick some bad-guy butt! I hope you enjoy the film, thanks for reading,

-Chris

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Nonstop action - and what action!, 13 February 2004

Author: gridoon

The thinnest plot imaginable (1: Bad guys think Jackie has an incriminating tape, 2: Bad guys go after him), but it doesn't matter; the movie serves up one virtuoso action sequence after another, and some priceless comic dialogue as well ("Oh my God, you want the tape too? If you find it PLEASE take it"). Jackie was 43 when this was filmed, but he sure hadn't lost a bit of his physical dexterity. This film is much better in every way than his American "breakthrough" hit, "Rumble In The Bronx", and Richard Norton makes an enjoyable villain. (***)

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Fun, 20 June 2001

Author: rutt13-1 (rutt13@yahoo.com) from IN, USA

You have to have kind of a high threshold for silliness (and bad acting) to enjoy this one. The plot's almost nonexistent, but it's got some good (little) fight scenes and stunts....A little disappointing, though, that Jackie doesn't get to fight lead villain Richard Norton, quite a good fighter (see "City Hunter.") The ending's pretty funny though. Probably the most "Turn off your brain, and enjoy" Jackie film since "Rumble in the Bronx," it delivers fun, plain and simple.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Rumble in the Melbourne CBD?, 3 August 2005

Author: AwesomeWolf from Australia

In my review of 'Who Am I?', I mentioned that 'Rumble in the Bronx', 'First Strike', 'Mr Nice Guy', and 'Who Am I?' all followed a similar formula as Jackie tried to capture western audiences. After watching 'Mr Nice Guy' again, I was actually kind of surprised to realize that it was almost a carbon copy of 'Rumble in the Bronx' - a Rumble in Melbourne's Central Business District, anyway.

Giancarlo (Richard Norton), Melbourne's top drug lord is angry because Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) has a tape that incriminates him. Jackie (Jackie Chan), a TV chef and arse-kicker extraordinaire comes into possession of the tape, making Giancarlo angry enough to kidnap Jackie's girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee). This makes Jackie angry. The end.

Wow. It seems like I've written out the whole plot and embellished upon it rather than summarized it. I'm just kidding - or am I? 'Mr Nice Guy' might be a contender for the thinnest plot in the universe prize, and the so called "supporting actors" don't even seem to be trying to act. Almost everything that happens in 'Rumble in the Bronx' is recycled for this. Unfortunately, the hovercraft was replaced by heavy machinery. Nothing can be an adequate substitute for Rumble's hovercraft.

Jackie kicking arse is the only reason for anyone to watch 'Mr Nice Guy'. It doesn't feature anything new or innovative, but any keen fan of Jackie should notice various 'Protector', 'Police Story' or 'Rumble in the Bronx' moments. It is a fun and exciting action film though, and that's what Jackie is all about.

And now for something completely different: Yet again, 'Mr Nice Guy' features Jackie playing a character called Jackie. I'm convinced that Jackie quit acting for several years, and took up a life as a cop, spy, chef, etc. All the while he had a film crew filming his adventures in order to create easy action movies. It's the only logical explanation - the writers can't be that lazy, right?

'Mr Nice Guy' reeks of being direct to video, but that doesn't stop it from being a fun action movie. Fans of Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung should give this a look - 7/10

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Thin on plot but fat with exciting stunts., 13 February 2005

Author: The Gryphon from West Hollywood, California

Thin on plot and fat with exciting stunts, Jackie Chan's "Mr. Nice Guy" is more like a speedy carnival ride than a movie. Chan plays a television chef who gets mixed up with a female reporter with an incriminating videotape that drug lords are after. Along the way Jackie Chan has his prerequisite close calls and death defying stunts mixed with his affable humor. All the stunts are good ones and there's a set-piece that requires Chan to escape his enemy in an unfinished building where all the blue doors are already installed that is my favorite. It's quite a farce having people opening and closing doors in pursuit and escape and never knowing who or what's behind the next door. One extended scene is a guilty pleasure for me and involves Chan commandeering a large earth moving vehicle and wreaking havoc with it. When I say large, I mean LARGE. The tires alone must be 12 feet tall in and of themselves. It's pretty cool to see the devastation this vehicle incurs. A fun film. Had the plot itself been a bit more thickened my rating would've been higher.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Fairly entertaining if you don't go in expecting too much, 26 January 2007
Author: Don Bendell from Germany

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Chan stars as a TV chef who gets caught up in the middle of a gang war when he accidentally switches videotapes with a reporter.

I think you have to take this film with a grain of salt. It was Chan's first English-language film in over ten years and, according to rumors, it was more of a test for New Line to see if Chan could handle speaking in English for an entire film. As such, not much attention was paid to the story (it's more of a rehash of Rumble in the Bronx than anything else), and most of the action pieces in the film are recycled from previous Chan movies (the mall fight from Police Story, the construction brawl from Police Story 2, etc.).

All that being said, the film is fairly entertaining if you don't go in expecting too much. The action (as could be expected under Hung's direction) is done well and some of the jokes are actually pretty funny (Hung is hilarious in a cameo as a beat-up bike messenger). There are a few sticky points, though. Once again (as in Operation Condor) Chan has three ditzy female sidekicks dragging on him (and the story) for much of the film, and Richard Norton (a good fighter you might know from the China O'Brien films or another Chan movie City Hunter) is absolutely wasted in his role as the villain; we don't even get to see a decent fight between him and Chan (apparently, Chan hurt himself and could not film a big fight sequence).

Mr. Nice Guy, like many Chan films, also suffers from what I like to call a "Warner Bros. ending," named after those Bugs Bunny cartoons where the creators don't know how to finish the cartoon, so they just have Bugs break into a song-and-dance, crack a lame joke or other such nonsense. The ending here seems to be really tacked on and weak. The story is literally wrapped up in about two minutes. I won't ruin it for you, but I think once you see it, you'll be scratching your head, thinking "That's it?" Yup. That's all folks."

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Great action, shocking action, Usual Jackie Chan, 12 June 1999

Author: Anthony Kohn from Melbourne, Australia

This film has some of the worst acting, and very nearly the worst plot of any movie out there. But I loved it. The action sequences (and to a lesser extent the comedy) are really impressive in this film. Its what we've come to expect from Jacki Chan movies. The finale is really quite impressive.

The acting in itself is quite humorous. Aussie actors doing really bad american accents, or just totally overacting. And some of them are actually quite good in other roles.

There also is a question to be raised over the editing. Why was the take where I was standing in the background not used? Doh, I could've been a movie star!

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
worth seeing, 16 March 1999

Author: david adam edelstein (davadam@well.com) from seattle, washington, usa

This movie is a strange combination: quite possibly the thinnest plot and worst acting of any Jackie Chan movie... and some of the best and funniest fight scenes, as well.

Fortunately the movie moves along briskly and there's never much time between humor and fight scenes for you to dwell on just how bad the acting was in the preceeding scene.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Jackie Chan still defines the "action guy" image., 2 January 1999

Author: Jason C. Atwood from Suffolk, Virginia

C'mon, all of you! Throw some more votes into the pot if you've seen enough out of everything! Jackie Chan's recent movies including MR. NICE GUY show their prescnce in the Hollywood mainstream thanks to a special ingredient: originality. Take your pick at RUMBLE IN THE BRONX and thereafter! Impressive and fast stunt choreography from TV chef Chan is astounding and well done, something that highly trained professionals have died for. Voices aren't dubbed this time around, but Chan's accent takes some learning. The touch of comedy is another welcome feature, making this one specially entertaining. Fat bicyclist steals the show for fighting back, and the end outtakes are a nice bonus. There are a couple of gripes, though. MR. NICE GUY tends to run the same route as R.I.T.B. from start to finish (like the giant truck finale), and it could have been less on stupidity, but as I said before, the comedy was welcome. More movies like this would (almost) put James Bond 007 in the retirement home! Another must-see for action buffs! Another must-have for the fan of Chan!

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Chan is great, but Hung needs to have someone else direct the non-action scenes, 20 May 2007

Author: lemon_magic from Wavy Wheat, Nebraska

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Jackie Chan is the best actor in "Mr. Nice Guy", which should give you an idea of how shoddy the acting is here. Worse, Jackie Chan is far and away the best actor here by a wide margin, and Jackie never really "acts", he just is affable and charming on camera. Everyone else here is community theater level or worse, which has to be at least partly the fault of director Sammo Hung. Chan films tend to need a lot of highly skilled stunt-men, and the two skill sets (double back flips through a pane glass window vs believable readings of a prosaic line of dialog) are not often found in one actor. But the non-action oriented supporting cast is just as bad. So either Hung didn't know how to get better takes from his actors and stunt-men, or he didn't realize (looking at the rushes) that what he had was bad (at least for Occidental expectations), or he just wasn't interested in the dialog and character interaction, except as an excuse to get to the next action sequence. (I'm inclined to believe it's a combination of the 2nd and 3rd explanations).

However, the action sequences are, as usual extremely impressive and engaging, and well worth your time and money to see. What can you say, it's Jackie Chan with a real budget and room to play. However, even here "Mr. Nice Guy" isn't quite up to the level of pieces like "Super Cop", "First Strike" or "Who Am I?" because the action falters a bit at the end. Instead of taking down the chief bad guy and his henchmen in a flurry of furious martial arts action,

***plot spoiler follows***

Chan's character commandeers an earth mover and drives it through the head villain's house. It's quite an amusing spectacle, I'll admit, and I give the movie credit for trying something different. But it just seems like an easy out, and not in the same league as the climaxes to films like "Drunken Master II" or "Project A" or "Armor Of God".

***Plot spoiler ends*****

Obviously, I am a fan of the man, going back to his "Protector" and "Police Force" days before "The Big Brawl" was first released in the West. So I would say that if you are a fan like me, you'll want to see "Mr. Nice Guy" on general principle, and you'll find lots to enjoy about it. But I think most Chan enthusiasts won't have it in their "Top 5" list of favorite Jackie Chan movies, or even the "Top 10".

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