This one's a veritable tornado of destruction. Former HongKong cop Keung (Jackie Chan) has just arrived in New York, where his Uncle Bill has decided to sell his interest in a Bronx supermarket and get married. Elaine (cute Anita Mui), the new owner, is only beginning to understand why the price was so reasonable: one day, a protection racket siphons off a good share of the profits, and the next, a tough biker gang (populated by D-list over-actors) terrorizes the store. (Apparently, the protection money isn't being particularly well spent.) Keung steps in, but his brand of hard-punching HK justice only seems to make things worse. Turns out that one of the bikers had accidentally intercepted millions in mob diamonds, and stashed them in a Chinese kid's wheelchair cushion. As the story starts to achieve critical improbability mass, the child just happens to be the brother of a biker girl. The mobsters (every one of them a stone-killer who dress like the guys in Reservoir Dogs) stake out the girl's apartment, where Jackie is their only protection. The movie hops from one plot point to the next, no matter how graceless or ridiculous the connection, the improbabilities stacking up in wobbly piles doomed to crash. Which sort of misses to point, too, because everything here exists as set-up for the stunts, and the action, once it gets going, is every bit as massively destructive as one could dream. I can't recall a film that surpasses this for sheer wreckage.

(2/4)



[Reviewed by Steve Spinali]