1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 49: Rumble in the Bronx

Don’t be misled by the brevity of this review: Rumble in the Bronx is as impressive as any movie from 1996. And it’s a big ball of cheese.

The dubbing is horrible.

The dialog and story are phoned-in.

The action is set in New York City … with mountains in the background. I thought the movie might have been shot in Hong Kong, but, actually, it was shot in Vancouver.

Even so …

It’s pretty good. Watching Jackie Chan is like watching Lionel Messi in his prime. Apparently, Chan broke a foot or ankle doing one of his stunts, and then he kept on making the movie with a cast on his leg.

Roger Ebert gives the movie three stars out of four, which is about right if one is comparing it with other movies by Jackie Chan. Comparing it with action movies in general, I’d give it five or six stars out of four.

Opening credits: Chan’s jetplane descends upon NYC. Dramatic sunrise (or is it a sunset?); dramatic music.

Chan has come to visit his uncle, a grocer. As they drive through Manhattan, Chan is awed. Is this where your store is, he asks. No, says his uncle. My store is in the Bronx. Cut to the Bronx, which is almost as wild as the city in Escape from L.A. It doesn’t take long before a biker gang threatens Chan.

Here is Love Interest No. 1 (Anita Mui).

Here is Love Interest No. 2 (Françoise Yip).

I must say, the movie’s attitude toward women isn’t radically forward-thinking.

There are lots of scenes with fighting and chasing, of course. In the final chasing scene, a hovercraft destroys about half of Vancouver/the Bronx (how this movie got made for just $7.5 million is beyond me). Chan uses an ancient Chinese technique to defeat the hovercraft. Chan isn’t just a great martial artist and stuntman. His character is an immensely likable human being: kind, polite, forgiving. Most harms, in the end, are healed – the main exception being the guy who gets fed into a woodchipper. (It turns out, Fargo didn’t produce the only dismemberment-by-woodchipper scene of 1996.)

Though it’s a very noisy movie, Daniel and Samuel slept through all of it.

More quixoticism

So … my dissertation is coming along. I aim to complete it this spring. (Have I said this yet?)

I might apply to do another graduate degree, in history. MA to start out with; PhD if I really enjoy it. The topic: Latin American constitutions. My goal is to pile up so much knowledge as to become un-unhirable.

My emotions aren’t as frenzied as they were eleven years ago, when I was applying to philosophy PhD programs; still, I’m preparing as diligently as I can, reading books about Latin American legal history. This time I’ll have a better idea of the demands.

I’ve been writing to various historians, gauging their enthusiasm for me. Most of them haven’t replied. I did get a nice email from somebody at the University of New Mexico. I have fond memories of New Mexico, of the day I was in Albuquerque. Everything there was the color of dirt, except for the railings on the interstate, which were salmon-colored. I really did like it in New Mexico.

Karin: “New Mexico sounds lovely.”

JP: “New Mexico is the color of dirt.”

We look at the photos on Wikipedia.

Karin: “Ooooh, New Mexico really is the color of dirt.”

I wrote to somebody at the University of British Columbia, what with my fond memories of Vancouver. That historian hasn’t replied.

My sense is that most U.S. and Canadian Latin Americanists don’t spend a lot of time analyzing constitutions. (They might read old criminal cases, or whatever.) My pie-in-the-sky historian’s dream would be to edit something worthy of being included among the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. There are entries in that series by Gottfried Leibniz, by the Radical Reformers, by Walter Bagehot. Why is there nothing from my own continent? Latin Americans have said interesting things about race, about citizenship, about state-building.

What’s more, they’ve actually tried out lots of governments.