film

A wisecracking truck driver, a kidnapped fiancée and a Chinese sorcerer collide in John Carpenter’s delirious 1986 fantasy adventure Big Trouble in Little China. Kurt Russell stars as Jack Burton, a self-assured trucker who finds himself embroiled in a supernatural battle beneath San Francisco’s Chinatown after his friend Wang Chi’s fiancée is abducted. What follows is a swirling mash-up of martial arts, mythology, horror and comedy, as the pair confront an assortment of monsters, warriors and dark magic in an attempt to rescue her from the clutches of the sinister David Lo Pan.

Initially a box-office disappointment, Big Trouble in Little China is now celebrated for its gleefully anarchic energy and affectionate subversion of action-hero conventions. Burton's exquisitely misplaced bravado is central to the joke and the appeal of the movie: despite his endless boasts, Burton is rarely the most competent person in the room. Riotous, laden with effects and impossible to categorise.