Cousins Thomas (Jackie Chan) and David (Yuen Biao) run a fast food van in Barcelona, but habitually have to fend street gangs off. One day while visiting David's institutionalised father, they meet Sylvia (Lola Forner), a pickpocket posing as a prostitute who immediately has them both enamoured. But after letting her stay at their apartment overnight, they wake the next morning to find she's left and taken their money with her. Then they encounter Moby (director Sammo Hung), a bumbling private eye who's also after Sylvia. The trio soon then learn Sylvia is the heir to a big fortune that a crime syndicate is trying to steal from her. Now she is kidnapped, of course, and so Thomas, David and Moby must go on a mission to rescue her and the money.
I'm a huge Chan fan and so upon learning this one starred him it provoked my interest, but I don't think it's a bright spot of his back catalogue. The fight scenes are, of course and as always, impeccable and several moments amused me, but both of those pluses are woven into what I considered a really dull and inhibited narrative. Hung (who later directed Jackie again in the far superior Mr. Nice Guy in 1997), and writers Johnny Le and Edward Tang offer a vision that's half urban crime caper, half swashbuckling adventure but both of those approaches here felt hackneyed and they never quite meshed together cohesively. For clarity I realise the narrative isn't the chief point of a martial arts movie but still, that can be very hard to ignore and here I couldn't quite because it didn't exactly charm me.
I'm a huge Chan fan and so upon learning this one starred him it provoked my interest, but I don't think it's a bright spot of his back catalogue. The fight scenes are, of course and as always, impeccable and several moments amused me, but both of those pluses are woven into what I considered a really dull and inhibited narrative. Hung (who later directed Jackie again in the far superior Mr. Nice Guy in 1997), and writers Johnny Le and Edward Tang offer a vision that's half urban crime caper, half swashbuckling adventure but both of those approaches here felt hackneyed and they never quite meshed together cohesively. For clarity I realise the narrative isn't the chief point of a martial arts movie but still, that can be very hard to ignore and here I couldn't quite because it didn't exactly charm me.
I much prefer Jackie and his movies when they're really rollicking and relentless; this one, for me, was inconsistent at best. The action delivers the goods but as I said, the storytelling negatively counters that delivery. There's also insufficient confidence in Hung's pacing and some of the music score borders on being very dated as well. Therefore, these Wheels on Meals didn't exactly have the best traction for me. 6/10.
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