Man Movie Encyclopedia: Rumble In The Bronx

Greetings, beautiful people.

I’ve been doing the MME series for a while now, and I realized that I’ve never touched the Jackie Chan classics. I did Rush Hour, but I wanted to start dipping into his Hong Kong films that made him the star we love. Rumble In The Bronx was just on TV, so I took that as a sign and decided to cover that first, then we’ll get into the gooooood stuff.

I hope all is well with ya’ll, and, much like myself, I’m sure ya’ll signed up for DisneyPlus just to have access to the first 10 seasons of The Simpsons. As I speak, I’m watching the Radioactive Man episode, one of my all time favorites, with arguably the greatest quote ever “The goggles, they do nothing!”. Also, man, when you see the line-up of seasons like, 4-8, it’s ABSURD, because every single episode is a 5 star banger. Unreal.

We open up with Jackie landing in New York, where he meets his uncle, who runs a store in the Bronx. Which is where the rumbling happens. It’s weird, some parts are over-dubed, some aren’t. And why are voice over actors so weird sounding? It’s so odd, and over the top. At the market, Jackie meets his uncle’s wife, which turns out to be an overly-animated black woman. Asian humor is so….different. Jackie poses in front of a two-way mirror, and I absolutely don’t blame him for this, as I can’t pass a shiney-rock without trying to see my flexing reflection.

Later that night we meet the local gang, who race with dirtbikes on top of parked cars for money. He stops one of them, an Asian chick, from running over his Uncle’s car that he’s gonna use in his wedding. The next day at the market, the gang arrives and naturally begin stealing everything they can. He ends up beating 4 dudes down at once, and goddamn if his fight scenes aren’t the best of all time. Ridiculously crisp, and in the realm of beliveability to an extent. Much better than a lot of fight scenes today where dudes literally defy any and all laws of physics. Later that night after leaving the shop, he sees a girl being drug into an alley. When he goes to rescue her, we find out it’s a trap. He’s able to fend off a few, but they trap him at the end of an alley way, and throw glass botles at him, which ends up fucking him up pretty bad. What I wanna know, is why do they design alley ways that go no where? Absolutely NOTHING good has ever happened in an alley way that goes no where. I’ve not heard a single story that started with “the best day of my life happened because of an alley that went no where”.
He gets back to his uncle’s place, where we learn that the asian chick from the gang lives next door with her brother, who is in a wheel chair.

She fixes him up, and as he heads to work the next day, he’s confronted by them again, who try and chase him down again, but fail, again. We later see a car cashe that ends in a buncha dead people, which was apparently a deal for diamonds that went wayward. One of the gang members checks it out, and finds a shit ton of diamonds. He ganks them, they give chase, and he manages to stash them in Danny, the kid with the wheelchair, stashes them in his wheel chair coushin, which he has access to because Danny and Jackie were hiding from the dudes giving chase.
Jackie ends up hanging with the sister, which pisses off the gang, and they trash the store as revenge. They also end up getting a few members kidnapped via the professionals who stole the diamonds. They don’t know where Angelo is, so one of them gets fed to a woodchipper.

Meanwhile, Jackie heads to the gang’s HQ to hash it out, and whoops on the whole lot of’em before they call for peace.
Once that’s all taken care of, they’re interupted by one of the gang members showing up with another member, in garbage bags. They locate Angelo, and Jackie says let’s call the FBI, as earlier he ran into the bad guys, who lied and said they were FBI and gave him their card. So, he calls, they show up, hell breaks loose. After Jackie escapes, he finds out the bad dudes have his friends, and even destroy the market his Uncle just sold, thinking Jackie owned it. He agrees to exchange the diamonds for his friends, and gets the police involved. This almost gets him killed however as they figure out he’s wired. Well, it’s at this point that the movie not only jumps the shark, it jumps EVERY shark, and gets completely ridiculous.

The cops are here. They have it handled, however, Jackie feels the need to chase the bad guys down himself, even whent hey get on a giant hover-craft! I mean, holy shit. He’s even water-skiing off it at one point. It goes on shore, starts tearing up the streets, and it seems like the simplest thing on Earth to stop. However, the cops have tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas. So, Jackie, gets in a Lamborgini, with a giant sword hanging out of it, and drives into the hover-craft, slashing the inflateable portion of it.

Yes, everything you just read actually happened. There is no way the last portion of this movie was written seriously. I’m convinced it had to be a joke, and the writer wanted to see just how far he could actually get it, and some how it ended up being made. Then, after all that, Jackie slaps some duct-tape on the hover-craft, finds where White Tiger is, and runs him over! I’m not exactly sure how law enforcement works, this much I admit, but I sincerely doubt they’d let you take a vehicle that was just used in a crime spree rampage, and allow you to chase down a criminal mastermind. I dunno, I could be wrong, perhaps they touched on it on an episode of Law & Order SVU where a rapist drove a hover-craft or something and we find out you absolutely could take a hover-craft used in a rampage to get revenge. But I doubt it.

MAN MOVIE TALLY:
1-Liners: 0
Guys Beat Up: 15
Guys Killed: 1
Swear Words: 8
Boobies: 0
Explosions: 1
Chase:4
Broken Bones: 0
Fight/Shoot-Out At Motel?: No
Guy Get Girl? No
Guy/Girl Smoke?: No

MAN FACTS:
As was the style at the time, instead of filming in New York, they filmed in Vancouver. In order to make it look more like New York, they had to put up grafitti, and take it down during the day, as well as plenty of other dress-ups, also doing their best to make sure mountains didn’t make it into the shot. However, eventually Jackie said nuts to it, and let’s just focus on the action.

Jackie broke his foot during a stunt where he lept onto the hover-craft, and in order to keep filming in a cast, they created a sock to put over it that looked like his shoes.

C’MON BENNETT, LET’S PARTY!:
Rumble In The Bronx is what broke Jackie to the American audiences big time. Funny enough, I wonder why. The movie is fun, with some great action, but the God-awful voice-acting, the over-the-top facial expressions, they bring the movie down a bit. It’s weird, because Jackie is completely normal in this movie, yet everyone else is…cartoon like? Also, I find it odd how forgiving he was of the girl who literally set him up to be murdered. Regardless, Jackie is awesome, and the movie definitely keeps up it’s end of the bargin in terms of action, I just wouldn’t consider this one of Jackie’s all time greats.
***1/2 Head-Butts out of 5

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.
Instagram: @Caliber_Winfield
[email protected]
If you just can’t wait until next week, you can also find me at these fine places:
Only A Ninja Can Review A Ninja: The Man Movie Encyclopedia
The deadly arts contained inside these movies can only be viewed and reviewed by one man, Caliber Winfield. For only a ninja, can review a ninja. I cover all the classics, from Enter The Ninja, American Ninja, to the modern films such as Ninja Assassin and Ninja. I don’t want to say this book has both saved and changed lives, but this book has both saved and changed lives.
The Man Movie Encyclopedia: The Hall of Burly – Vol. 1 – A collection of the first 19 MME articles written for 411. You get all the classics like Commando, Robocop, and Die Hard, not to mention bad-assery such as Point Break and They Live. Beyond that, you also get two new articles. My Top 5 favorite action movies, and what I believe to be the Top 5 most over-the-top scenes in action movie history. I won’t lie, it’s the greatest self=help/martial arts instruction book of all time.
My Summer Vacation At Camp Crystal Lake – My brand new ebook that’s become so popular it’s charting on the album sales charts. I cover the Friday The 13th franchise in Man Movie Encyclopedia fashion, followed up by a few list-based articles, chronicling my favorite kills, moments from the franchise, and a few other subjects. $3 via amazon, or simply email me and get it for $2, either way, it’ll probably change your life.
Caliber Winfield On The Facebook –
Anything new that I do you guys can find here. How are we not at 100 likes? I mean, c’mon.
All Things Caliber –
I merged my wrestling website into my long standing website that’s been up for over 10 years. Anything under the sun, I’ve written about it.