The Greatest Characters from the Greatest Movie Ever Made, i.e. Rumble in the Bronx: Part One
"WHO killed LANCE?"
What can I say that hasn’t already been said about Rumble in the Bronx? It was the film that finally broke Jackie Chan into western theaters after years of Americans deciding Police Story isn’t the raddest thing ever made. Instead of having Jackie do what Jackie does—be Bruce Lee if Bruce Lee was also Buster Keaton with a death wish—American film companies had handed him off to guys like James Glickenhaus. You really want the guy who made The Exterminator within ten miles of Jackie Chan? Okay, it’s your funeral. All I know is that Jackie runs by my house and then zooms a speedboat by my house and I still think that movie bites.
It took another ten years to properly introduce film’s greatest weapon to America, and we still had to use Ben Stein to make him palatable to audiences. Nothing says Late 1995 like “we hired Ben Stein to show up to explain this thing.” The TV spot put Jackie Chan in the same basket as Clear Eyes and two other things that aren’t Jackie Chan. He was suddenly a commodity to be sold to people who had maybe never seen a Kung Fu movie before.
There’s a good chance these folks walked into the theater wholly unprepared for the lunacy that was to follow. You can tell somebody about Jackie Chan’s fight scenes by saying “they’re like every stupid action movie you watched from 1981 until 1994, but way more fun and created by someone who actually knows something about filmmaking.” You can’t tell somebody about how these fight scenes are staged or who is involved, because “we dressed Canada and Hong Kong’s most experienced stuntmen in the radioactive ooze that comes from mixing The Warriors with Ninja Turtles, then told them to mug like they’re trying to signal that there’s a fire in the background of a silent movie” is a kind of lunacy that must be experienced firsthand. The truth is that you get it or you don’t.
And if you don’t get it then I feel sorry for you, because Rumble in the Bronx is a perfect ninety minutes of joy. You can get Jackie in any Jackie Chan film—well, almost any—as shown by the eventual insane runaway success of the Rush Hour franchise. But who do you really remember from his fully-American exploits? What was the name of Chris Tucker’s character from Rush Hour? Which movie did he star in with Jennifer Love Hewitt? Is The Medallion a real movie? Shout the answers at your screen, because I will hear you.
We are here to celebrate these magnificent weirdos who make Rumble in the Bronx—and to a lesser extent Police Stories 3 and 4—a perfect hour and a half. And in a movie filled with the reprobates who line the streets of The Bronx if The Bronx was somehow Vancouver, who better to start with than…
ANGELO
When I was eleven and seeing this film for the first time in Actual New York, Angelo was of course my favorite. (Or as Jackie’s Uncle Bill would have said: “Poor KIIIID! When he was ELevEN he saw RumbleintheBRONNNNX andAngelowashisFAVorite!” This is the only surviving “Bill Tung receives super-enthusiastic dubs” joke in this article where there used to be at least a dozen.) Never mind that actor Garvin Cross is so Canadian that he appeared in both the “guy who wrote Miracle Mile truck-explodes a gorilla” episode of The X-Files and the “now you have to care about Mulder’s Sister AND alien bees” episode of The X-Files; his performance is the perfect grotesque of an outer-borough not-so-street tough. Every Italian family in the city has got one total moron like this one, although your nonna would tell you that your family doesn’t and by the way they’re mostly Sicilian.
Angelo sets the second of the movie’s three or maybe twelve plots in motion by simply acting like he’s in an action movie, and somehow that becomes the most realistic single moment in Rumble in the Bronx. “Look at all these diamonds I found on this corpse! Better hide them in the worst possible spot! Where’s that handicapped kid?” It’s a bonkers moment inside a ludicrous movie designed by a character who has definitely watched a lot of bonkers ludicrous action movies. Let’s review how he reminds Jackie Chan that Jackie Chan has previously broken Angelo’s nose:
Beeee-you-ti-ful!
I’d like to think that this unhinged lunacy is what has made Garvin Cross the actor you’ve seen the most without realizing it. Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Legends of Tomorrow, and even more sedate network stuff like The Good Doctor. Did you know he was the guy leading the snowmobile brigade in that part of Inception that Christopher Nolan wrote after a particularly long session of GoldenEye? I could talk about Garvin Cross and Angelo all day, but then we wouldn’t get to…
TONY
All right, say it with me now:
The subtitles should read “Wuhdddahell do youuu tink you’rrrrr DOOOOO-ing???” No one should miss out on the most acting ever put into one moment in any film. This is every choice anyone made in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood shoved into one hyper-dense moment. This line is any given meltdown on Hot Ones amplified until it can shatter glass. Nicolas Cage looks at this scene and says “yeah, I can’t get there”.
Marc Akerstream didn’t have many speaking roles, although he had plenty of experience as a stuntman in weird movies like Xtro II and Needful Things and The Sweet Hereafter, of all things. When he was put front and center he was going to make it count. This line reading is the obvious GOAT, but his entreaty to Jackie Chan to “STAAAAP” and his response to the grisly death of one of his goons (“WHO killed LANCE?”) are not far behind. Tony works as a villain and works as a hero because every bit of his performance is dialed to the lunatic fringe of acting. Akerstream met with an unfortunate untimely death, but we get a few perfect moments like these as his legacy. Would that we had a hundred more just like it.
How we feeling so far, Anita Mui?
Hey, that’s my general state of being! If you’re there now, then you’re gonna love…
A Man Selling Ice Cream
Do you have a need for exactly one type of ice cream and the worst fashion choices I’ve ever seen and also more dialogue than most films contain delivered as rapid-fire nonsense? Here comes a man selling ice cream! What kind of ice cream? ICE CREAM—
I love it. Ice cream is posed as a statement, an exclamation, a question, an interrogative, and a greeting all in the space of a simple “hello”. A man wearing a t-shirt that reads “the choice of the suspect generation” shouts two words into the air and a dozen new scenarios appear. “Ice Cream” hasn’t worked this hard in a movie since somebody assaulted Precinct 13. And while Jackie Chan never plays Keung again and none of the main characters return, somehow A Man Selling Ice Cream comes back for Mr. Nice Guy.
Also hey wait that’s Wakin Chau! That would be like having a hot dog guy in a Marvel movie and having him played by Harry Styles! Who can put me in contact with President of Good Ideas at Disney so I can pitch that?
“THEY KILLED LANCE!”
This character is listed simply as one of Tony’s Gang in the credits, which means we are forced to associate him with the movie’s second-best line reading. How did they kill Lance? White Tiger’s goons fed him into a woodchipper! And before anyone can call “Fargo did that” on this piece of 1996 brutality, Rumble in the Bronx beat Fargo to American theaters by a matter of weeks. Not only that, but here we have the even more horrific act of feeding someone into the woodchipper while they’re still alive. Steve Buscemi at least had the dignity to be dismembered first.
And look, The Coen Brothers are master filmmakers and they always work with actors who give brilliant and nuanced performances. Way crappier filmmakers were hiring directly out of Coen Brothers movies to make their terrible movies look somewhat okay. Armageddon is something like 75% Coen regulars and then Bruce Willis. But have any of them pulled this face? See above for The Most Acting. Peter Stormare has never stumbled into a scene carrying forty pounds of a fallen comrade in a Hefty bag. In fact, the Oscars should be determined by which of the nominated actors can best pull off the emotional journey of Mr. “THEY KILLED LANCE!” I feel like the winners from this year would remain the same. Ke Huy Quan would kill this, and we already know that Michelle Yeoh automatically enhances the quality of a Jackie Chan movie.
HOWARD
HOWARD! Howard is the best character in any Jackie Chan movie, thus making him the best thing to happen in the history of cinema. We’ll leave Part One of many parts on how Rumble in the Bronx is the best with this line reading. What happens when Hong Kong filmmakers want stereotypical NYPD detectives but they have to cast out of Vancouver and only know the NYPD from 1970s network cop shows? Take it away, Howard!
NEXT TIME: Howard is saved by a magic cigar, rock bands tell us how to identify hovercrafts, and Our Boss is Not White Tiger. You better be cArEfuLLLLLLLL!