Big Trouble in Little China

Big Trouble in Little China
by John Carpenter

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Category: DVD
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DVD details

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Anamorphic; Closed-captioned; Color; DVD; Full Screen; Widescreen; NTSC

DVD Reviews of Big Trouble in Little China

DVD Review: The sequel to Buckaroo Banzai that never was...
Summary: 4 Stars

Russell plays Jack who becomes involved in the rescue attempt of a friend's fiance just over from China. She's a rarity among Asians as she has green eyes. She's immediately kidnapped by the henchmen of Lo Fat an evil spirit who has been imprisoned in a mortal body (but still has most of his supernatural powers). Marrying and sacrificing a girl with green eyes is his only hope of salvation from a crumbling aged body.

The performances are uniformly strong. It's clear that all the performers were having a blast making this film. Kim Cattrell looks lovely as usual although her make up is a bit too over the top. It actually works against her natural beauty. Her performance as a lawyer that becomes involved in helping retrieve the girl with the green eyes is quite good. Clearly her inspiration was the heroines of films like His Girl Friday.

Russell has always been an underrated treasure. He's shown a remarkable versatility in a variety of roles over the years. He incorporates elements of John Wayne's overblown swagger to Jack. Jack considers himself to be a bit bigger than life even though he's just a truck driver. The cast of Chinese Americans give excellent performances as well. Clearly they're having fun with their roles and make the most of their screen time. Given the lack of Asian actors in American films (until recently), Big Trouble is a nice showcase for underappreciated character actors.

There's much kung fu action, sword and gun play in this well paced modern take off of the b-movie and serials of the 40's and 50's. The stunt work is terrific and well choregraphed. It's clear that Carpenter and his stunt co-ordinators were paying attention to Chinese kung fu movies long before anyone else was. This single disc edition has the original film plus a pair of funny, interesting commentaries from star Kurt Russell and director John Carpenter.

I have a couple of minor issues with this DVD edition. While the picture transfers is quite good overall, it appears soft at times. I'm not sure if this happened during the transfer process or was due to the condition of the print used to create the DVD master. I seem to recall that the VHS and laserdisc editions had similar issues although I don't know that they were quite as noticable. The sound is quite good as well and is presented in DTS, stereo and dolby digital. The DTS soundtrack is a bit more compressed and sounds flatter than the other soundtracks. That could be just the mix or even the way I have the sound adjusted on my system. I tend to go with the former.

I'm sure there's additional behind the scenes footage out there that didn't make the two disc edition. While I appreciate the two disc addition, some of the features here could have been transferred over to the single disc edition with no or little loss in picture quality. Since the single disc edition is a dual layered disc, there's a lot more that could have been added. It appears that all Fox DVD did was to transfer all the contents of the first disc to this single disc edition and ignored the rest.

If you can still find the two disc edition, it also includes footage cut from the film (much of it recorded on betamax. Sadly, the deleted scenes and outtakes have pretty much disappeared. Carptener's early use of video to him "pre-edit" a film allows the DVD viewers to see what was cut and the original continuity of the film with these scenes restored. While the picture quality on the second disc isn't as sharp as the DVD transfer of the film, they're a unique look into the creative process and essential for hardcore fans of the film. There's also an interview with optical effects supervisor Richard Edlund on disc two as well as a stills gallery and much, much more.

If all you're interested in having is the original theatrical version of the film in its original aspect ratio (widescreen), then this single disc edition will certainly do.

Description of Big Trouble in Little China