The Protector (USA/Hong Kong, 1985)

Paul's Take:

This is an odd beast of a film. I went in thinking it was going to be an 80s neon hard boiled cop film, like a HK set Black Rain but dumber, but instead its kind of a goofball exploitation picture that could star Leo Fong.

Take an 80s Dirty Harry movie, insert Jackie Chan , but his on screen partner is Danny Aiello, and the film is directed by pulp hack James Glickenhaus, he of McBain fame. Sounds great doesn't it?! It isn't really but I still had a lot of fun with it. Nathan covers a lot of the plot in his review below, so I'll jump ahead to my main points.

The Protector has a vibe of one of those odd movies that popped up after Enter The Dragon, stuff like Shatter, with East meets West vibes mixed with exploitation elements and some hairy violence. There is a lot of action but a lot of it seems laboured and apparently was a cause of friction between Glickenhaus and Chan. There is still liberal use of giant squibs, half decent martial arts and Jackie doing his Jackie thing with jumps and leaps off things onto other things. But it seems dialled back and the fights, while fast, definitely lack impact. I can see why it's not popular with the Chan brigade.

To me it makes up for these short comings by being either genuinely funny or amusing for all the wrong reasons. Aiello's dialogue mostly consists of 'fuck', there is racism, sexism, surprising copious nudity and hideous 80s clothing, including  the delight of Aiello's portly frame encased in an ugly red tracksuit. You also see him running about in his pants at a massage parlour. Bleugh.

There is fun too be had here but more probably more for folk who are fans of low rent 80s action pictures or the sort of trash Godfrey Ho would produce. People like me!

I enjoyed this, the highlight being Chan piloting a speedboat into a goon who shouts MOTHERFUCKER! before exploding.

It's that kind of trash.

Nathan's Take:

New York cop, Billy Wong (Jackie Chan), loses his partner to some coked up robbers in a bar and soon after witnesses the kidnapping of a prominent businessman's daughter. Teaming up with fellow cop Danny Garoni (Danny Aiello), he heads off to Hong Kong to rescue her.

Paul's choice for a double review and let me preface this by saying I'm not a huge Jackie fan. Nothing necessarily against him per se, but he's just never grabbed me and that unique humour of his certainly isn't my cup of tea. But I thought maybe I just haven't watched the right films having only seen a handful of his most obvious works, so I approached this optimistically. Jackie trying to crack the US market by way of a hard boiled cop film? Sounds good on paper at least. Sadly it should of stayed on the paper for me.

When the film started I thought I had clicked on the wrong title as some punks dressed like the Legion of Doom in a slum that looked straight out of a post apocalyptic jam rob a truck, but soon after an uzi wielding Jackie turns up, berating the driver for driving with a cargo of computers in New York and then heads to the bar for a few cold ones. Obviously the place gets robbed by some goons coked off their faces and a few big squibs later, Jackie's partner lies dead and the man himself heads off for a speedboat chase. Sounds good right?

Wrong. It's all so uninspired and generic it just feels off. For as bloody and violent as the opening is, it's so bland and static with its stand and deliver gunplay that it just comes across as well.... Boring, I'm sorry to say. And this is the films biggest problem, I may not be that well versed in Hong Kong film as a whole, but action scenes there flow. They're chaotic, kinetic and free flowing whereas here director James Glickenhaus films everything in such a generic and bland way that he even makes Jackie hanging from a helicopter look tired.

From there, it's off to Hong Kong where sleaze, violence, casual racism, awkward Gweilo's and some mad zingers are the order of the day. There's moments of (un)intentional hilarity, like Jackie on a phone delivering lines such as "Listen you creep, it's not your money we want,but your ASS" or Danny Aiello proudly telling a police captain "I never go anywhere in Asia without an Uzi". But it never really worked for me and I'm unsure whether the script was intentionally trying to make Jackie into a badass or if it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Then there's the weirdest looking grenade launcher I've ever seen on screen, a criminally underutilized Moon Lee and Danny Aiello's constant sleazy wisecracks (though I did laugh at the sliding massage table 69 scene, oh and at his saggy man boobs).

And it would be remiss not to mention the shipping yard drug lab, complete with naked women and a professional indoor grow set up for growing their own watermelons to hide drugs in, I got a real kick out of that absolutely absurd set up.

It's not all bad to be fair, there's some legit stuntwork and Jackie pulls off some great moments such as the harbour chase where he is jumping dirt bikes and using bamboo canes to cross between boats as he chases badguys, but again it's all filmed in such a bland way that it sucks out any enthusiasm I had for the scene, leaving just the respect for Jackie pulling off the stunts himself, rather than being actually engaged in the film.

While The Protector wasn't for me, I can certainly see why some would get enjoyment from it, it just wasn't exciting enough for me and not even bad enough to be enjoyed in an ironic way either. It's just plain average.