RUMBLE IN THE BRONX: Coming to America

Rating: 🎬🎬🎬 ½
(1995)
[TRAILER]

A telltale sign of what generation someone belongs to is by where they know Jackie Chan from. Whether it’s from his anarchic Hong Kong ’80s action flicks, his breakthrough into mainstream Hollywood in the ’90s, or his cartoon series in the 2000s, Chan truly is a multi-generational screen presence. Having binged much of his output over the past year, I’ve noticed that the one constant across all three of these eras in his career is his penchant for playing pure-hearted heroes whose strong moral compasses puts them at odds with the amoral world they often find themselves in. Perhaps this is best exemplified in Rumble in the Bronx, a bizarre fish out of water story that could only be made by a Hong Kong filmmaker’s perception of what 1995 America was like.

Director Stanley Tong’s (Police Story 3: Supercop) vision of New York seems beamed out of the mind of a kid raised on Italian Mad Max ripoffs and Cannon teen flicks. The street gang Chan runs afoul of is a weird cross between Lord Humungus’ entourage and extras from one of the Breakin’ movies. In fact, one of the members is a dead ringer for Trash from 1990: The Bronx Warriors. Even ordinary extras on the street are dressed like models in a Sears catalog, overly flashy and perhaps just a few years out of date.

Hong Kong cinema of the era is often characterized by its tendencies toward melodrama and whiplash-inducing shifts in tone. Rumble in the Bronx is no different, oscillating from tug at your heartstrings sentimentality to manic slapstick physical comedy. It’s the sort of thing that can be a turnoff to viewers not attuned to Hong Kong sensibilities, but if you can start to jive with that wavelength, it just clicks and you’re in for the ride.

All of this helps enhance Chan’s natural charisma as the straight man often caught in bizarre, usually physically brutal circumstances. We all know that Chan does his own stunts, but perhaps even more impressive are the scenes where he’s just forced to take blow after blow. There’s a particularly brutal scene in which Chan is repeatedly pelted with glass bottles. The scene is shot in a way to painstakingly show every bottle crashing into Chan, the expression of pain on his face, and to make the audience feel every blow themselves. It’s near cringe-inducing.

In watching the film, I was reminded how such a lean piece of action entertainment is near novel these days. Clocking in at just 90 minutes, the film’s narrative is nothing more than a series of plot points to springboard various action montages for Chan to tear up the set (and probably one of his muscles in the process). Such a keen sense of timing and pacing shouldn’t feel this fresh, but in this era of 2.5 hour Marvel action epics, it’s near revelatory.

In this era of political divisiveness toward foreigners, Rumble in the Bronx is perhaps the perfect antidote toward this cynicism and fear-mongering. Chan, through his selflessness and award-winning smile, not only manages to defeat the gang that harasses him, but turn them into allies against the real enemies. It’s the kind of sincerity that’s easy to scoff at as overly saccharine and unrealistic, but I have a soft spot for such genuine earnestness in my cinema. The jaunty pop-punk song (“Kung Fu” by Ash) playing over the bloopers in the credits is the cherry on top of this unabashedly joyous action romp.