I love action movies a lot, which was why enjoy this master piece done as far back as 1997 by the legendary Jackie Chan. The movie is called Mr. Nice Guy. The main actor is of course - Jackie Chan. And just as you already rightly guessed, this movie is full of actions and interesting scenes. Below are the things I will cover in this review:
- The movie Storyline
- My favorite action scenes
- My Opinion about scenes and the movie
- Conclusion.
Alright, lets quickly start with the Storyline.
Mr. Nice Guy - the Storyline
Jackie Chan is the nice guy (the protagonist) that got into trouble for helping complete strangers. The antagonist are two powerful drug dealer groups that are intent on covering their illegal drug business at all costs. When Jackie intervened to save a female reporter who was chased by the drug lords for possessing a tape containing their criminal activities, he unknowingly became their main target.
Through out the rest of the movie, Jackie continues to run from the criminal gangs, while fighting them at the same time to protect himself and friends. He uses his expert martial arts skills at various scenes to either evade the chasing drug guys, or momentarily win a small fight to escape. At the end of the movie, Jackie was able to defeat the drug groups. He used their giant truck to destroy their expensive sports cars and big mansion as you can see in the thumbnail image.
So basically, Mr. Nice Guy is the story of a character that defeated fighting drug gangs, stopped their illegal business and successfully rescued their victims who are complete strangers to him. The storyline is one that illustrates how the good always wins the evil.
My favorite action scenes
Mr. Nice Guy is an action-packed movie. There are so many scenes to choose from. Below are some of my favorites:
3 Scenes from the construction site
This is one of the scenes where tough fist fights took place between Jackie and one of the gangs. As can be seen above, the fight landed Jackie on top of one of the motorized saw machines used to split cut timber. The gang member quickly turned on the machine and the saw started rotating at top speed ready to cut anything into two.
Jackie was just recovering from the beatings and quickly saw that he was close to being cut in two. He quickly used his martial skills here. He skillfully spread his legs and rose for the saw to go in-between. He then leaned towards the side and jumped off the machine. At this point, the gang member was still forcefully pushing the wood as the machine cuts it and just narrowly misses Jackie.
Just after the saw machine episode, the fighting continues inside this factory. 3 gang members are engaging Jackie in a fight and each has gotten serious blows from him. One of the gang members is seen beaten into a concrete mixer. Jackie turns on the mixer and this guy is being turned in endless circles while he shouts - the mixer is just turning him as if he were concrete.
The second gang member by the left has his hands tied to a vibrating machine. So as the one in mixer turns and shouts, this other gang member struggles without success, to free his hands from the machine. At the ground is another gang member who was struggling to recover from the blows and kicks from Jackie. In this particular scene, Jackie is winning.
Still another fighting scene from the construction site. I call this the Wheelbarrow scene. Here the gang members got a better of Jackie. The beat him and forced him into the wheelbarrow which they rolled down a platform so Jackie will fall off the high floor.
Well as you guessed, Jackie slid down and tumbled over the edge. But he was somehow able to grab the handles of the wheelbarrow and hung on. One drug Lord spoke to him as he was hanging, having seized his girlfriend and the TV reporter. He was able to recover from this position and continued fighting
1 Scenes from the multi-door block
In this Scene, Jackie continues to run away from one of the gangs. He is chased into this block with so many doors. Its really confusing as one door leads to another, which still leads to another. As you can see here, Jackie hides behind the door of one of the rooms as one gang member opens the door and furiously walks past. He is actually looking for Jackie who is perfectly hid behind the open door.
Jackie in this scene employs the hit and run approach, as is evident through out the movie. The reason is that he is always outnumbered by the gangs.
3 Scenes from the Drug lord's mansion
The above scene is a big turning point in the story. It is part of the movie climax. A gang member operating the giant dump truck was instructed to crush Jackie. Somehow, Jackie survived it and took over the truck and drove it towards the main entrance of the drug lord's compound.
The above scene shows the exact moment Jackie crashed the truck through the gate and into the compound. One of the gang members standing guard at the entrance backs away from the truck as can be seen above. He was shell-shocked and ran for safety. Jackie continues to drive the truck towards expensive sports vehicles parked inside the compound and towards the drug lords mansion.
As seen above, Jackie drives towards cars parked at the driveway of the compound and started crushing the vehicles with the trucks giant tires. Two members of the gang shoots at the truck and Jackie while backing away to avoid being crushed by the truck.
Jackie was not hurt as the giant truck has lots of iron protection in the front. He continued driving and he was able to successfully climb and crush all 4 vehicles in the driveway.
This scene features another revenge done with the giant truck by Jackie. He made sure the evil gang have no vehicles they could escape in. After crushing the vehicles at the entrance, he continues to drive and crush more vehicles as the gang members shoot and run away from the truck.
In the above clip, we see one of the giant wheels of the dump truck crushing one of the sports cars in the compound. Jackie was able to destroy all the vehicles and even went on to drive through destroy the mansion occupied by the drug lord.
My Opinion about the movie and scenes
- The movie is action-packed: Mr. Nice Guy was made in 1997, thats a very long time from now. Yet, this movie live up to any action blockbuster of today. Every bit of the movie is top action. There are street chases, fights in the construction site, inside the gang bus and wherever Jackie and his friends are found.
I think the team behind this movie spent money on location as various scenes are shot in many real locations. There was a fighting scene where a Pepsi truck spilled its cargo while trying to avoid the gang crazy driving. And you have the dump truck and other scenes. The location for each scene was properly planned and selected.
Jackie stunts are top notch: Although he has stopped performing such stunts now, Jackie was exceptional in his acts. His kicking, running and jumping over walls and obstacles were amazing. He times his blows well. Although he misses them too, he almost always hits the target.
Some scenes are unrealistic: While the movie tried to show something that can happen in real life, some of the scenes are surely unrealistic. For example, Jackie defeated some gang members of up to 5 in fights at various scenes.
The scene where Jackie was nearly cut into two, but he escaped was surely not real. While the saw blade was turning and ripped the wood on which Jackie laid, it would have been unreal that he was missed unhurt. And for the gang member to know how to operate such complex machine at that point does not look real too.
Conclusion
Mr. Nice Guy is a top choice for me any day. Its the type of action movie that keeps up awake all through the night. The hide and seek moments, the kicks and fights, the shouts and runs, all the make this movie fun to watch. While everything was not perfect, Jackie and his crew did an amazing job in this movie.