MOVIE REVIEW : ‘BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA’ IS BIG TROUBLE INDEED

There are many dark plots hatching in “Big Trouble in Little China” (citywide). They’re being cooked up in devilish hangouts--catacombs beneath the San Francisco streets--by people with names like Needles, the Wild Man and the Sewer Monster, in places like the Honorable Hall of the Infernal Judge and the Room of the Upside-Down Hell. None is darker or deadlier than the movie itself.

Peruse the story and people at your peril: Lo Pan (James Hong), the 2,000-year-old man, celibate for an id-curdling 20 centuries, consumed with lust for green-eyed women. His three martial arts miscreants and kung fu kidnapers: Thunder, Lightning and Rain. Supernatural gangs slugging it out in suddenly flat San Francisco streets. Lo Pan’s foes: the plucky Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), the sagacious Egg Shen (Victor Wong), the motormouth Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) and, most dangerous of all, the dreaded trucker and pig-carrier Jack Burton (Kurt Russell)--a man who runs around in his undershirt doing bad John Wayne impressions.

How did this happen? How could the mind of mortal man concoct such foolishness? Truly it has been said: When too much money enters the pockets of humankind, sense flies out the window.

“Big Trouble in Little China” is a try at mock-Oriental movie magic that goes leaden about a third of the way through--and finally detonates into great, whomping firebombs of overcalculated, underinspired absurdity. Since it’s a failure by gifted people (director John Carpenter, writer W. D. Richter, star Kurt Russell), it annoys you more than a bad movie by obvious dullards: The film makers here have the talent to compel you to watch it. Everything that shows care and skill--settings, fight choreography, Dean Cundey’s cinematography, Carpenter’s musical score, the performances of “Dim Sun’s” Victor Wong or James Hong, the karate of Carter Wong--only increases your dissatisfaction; this is excellence in the service of balderdash.

How did this movie go so wrong? Certainly Richter is partly to blame. He has attacked the original version of the script (set in the Old West) as dreadful. But how could this revised screenplay--full of formula action and sapless one-liners--be an improvement on anything?

Russell simply missteps. He’s been so good in movies like “Silkwood” and “The Best of Times,” in Carpenter’s “Elvis” and “The Thing” that you know his problem here must be conceptual. He does a whiny, overly bellicose John Wayne impersonation that keeps you from accepting his character and completely misses its target. (Wayne was right when he called himself a “reactor”; if you don’t get a sense of catlike awareness, you miss his persona.)

The director, trying for speed, spectacle and whimsy, seems hamstrung--like his pratfalling hero, Jack Burton. One wonders if Carpenter got overly wounded by the press on “The Thing,” probably, along with “Dark Star,” his best movie to date. It came out within a week of “E.T.,” and maybe the critics punished it for its deliberately paranoid view of alien contact. Since then, as if in reaction, he’s been working in a near-Spielbergian mode: His fine “Starman” owed something to “E. T.,” and this movie is indebted--in fact, way overdrawn--to both Indiana Jones movies.

But Carpenter isn’t a Spielberg. He doesn’t seem to have either Speilberg’s genius for spectacular kitsch or his overwhelming desire to please. Usually Carpenter’s dark side makes his movies work; it’s also the source of most of his humor. By making this Hong Kong demonic folderol so kittenish and unthreatening--making the hero a macho oaf who keeps blundering around, stumbling and swearing--Carpenter distances us too much. Elaborate nonsense usually has to be unabashed; it either has to have a real purity, or be kidded mercilessly.

Big, hollow action-filled movies--some much worse than this--have sometimes succeeded spectacularly in recent years (if nothing else, they’re triumphs of marketing). The pity is that the film makers here had the stuff to win their public and do something remarkable--and they’ve probably missed both.

‘BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA’

A 20th Century Fox release of a Taft/Barish/Monash production. Producer Larry J. Franco. Director John Carpenter. Script Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein, W. D. Richter. Camera Dean Cundey. Executive producers Paul Monash, Keith Barish. Production design John J. Lloyd. Editors Mark Warner, Steve Mirkovich, Edward A. Warschilka. Visual effects Richard Edlund. With Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong, Kate Burton, Donald Li.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (parents are strongly cautioned; some material may be inappropriate for children under 13).