And it’s a high-kickin’, high-flyin’ delight.
With a premise so flimsy you half expect to see Chan punch his way through a copy of the script, the film finds Jackie in the role of… Jackie, a popular TV chef on Australian morning television. And like the real-life Chan’s media image, this fictional Jackie is just a really nice guy when a beautiful journalist in distress (the Power Rangers movie’s Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) bumps into him as she is fleeing local mobsters. See, Fitzpatrick’s reporter has proof that an Italian mafioso (Richard Norton) murdered a local street gang during a cocaine deal gone bad. Now the hoods are after her and she must run in her underwear into Jackie, who is such a good dude he ends up manhandling these tough guys for her. But now they’re also after him, just as his long-distance girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee) is visiting, and…
Look, the plot is paper thin. The point is the movie leans into what Jackie, Sammo, and ‘90s era Golden Harvest did best: spectacular acrobatic fight sequences that utilized props, humor, and Chan’s natural charisma to effervescent effect.
In Mr. Nice Guy, you’ll see Jackie fight on school buses, jump for realsies off cranes above Yarra River, and turn a construction site into a playground worthy of Charlie Chaplin as he uses cement mixers, buzz saws, and sledge hammers to bounce his way around a half-dozen opponents. In the climax, he even duels with a 120-ton mining vehicle.
The film’s elaborate fight sequences also hold the distinction of being where the late great fight choreographer Brad Allan got his start on Chan’s stunt team. Allan would go on to choreograph the fight sequences in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The World’s End, Kick-Ass, Wonder Woman, and the Kingsman movies before his passing in 2021.
Mr. Nice Guy is exactly what you want out of a Jackie Chan movie: it’s light, it’s frothy, and the stunt work alternates between inducing chuckles and awe. It’s also relatively forgotten. So now that you can watch it for free on YouTube, it’s perhaps time to discover that nice guys really can finish first.
