Racing Films

Wow!  Thunderbolt, what a film, it is high on action, high on excitement, high on evil villainy, high on confusion and very low on a coherent plot.  This one was not easy to track down in this part of the world, it felt like the sort of film that everyone would like to pretend doesn’t exist. I once saw it described in a review as the ugly stepchild of Jackie Chan films.  That is unkind to all the ugly stepchildren out there, this is much, much uglier.  Needless to say, it is not a film that wowed the critics, at least not the western ones.   The film clearly received a much better reception in the East as it was a winner of the prestigious ‘Golden Horse Award’ at the Golden Horse Film Festival for best action direction.  It was also nominated for best action choreography at the Hong Kong film awards.  Fair enough too, as there is a lot of action on and off the track.

First of all let's briefly cover off the Jackie Chan racing connections, it is one of those things that pops up as a race fan every now and then.  You’re listening to the commentary at le Mans or some other global GT event and you hear “…Jackie Chan racing”.  At that moment you start thinking ‘do they mean ‘The Jackie Chan’ or have I misheard the name of some obscure sponsor?’  I always make a mental note to look this up after the race or do some googling but always forget.  If you are in the same camp as me, I have now finally saved you the trouble.  Jackie Chan racing is indeed supported, orchestrated and probably funded by the man himself, who has had a strong interest and lifelong connection to racing.

In terms of the film, the most interesting thing about it is the incredibly complex plot, if you intend to watch this film I would suggest making sure you are at your peak in terms of powers of concentration as it is pretty easy to get confused if you are not paying attention for a second.  Without spoiling too much I’ll try and give you a decent overview as it is hard to get through this cliff-hanger without the Cliffs Notes.

We start the film with Foh To (Jackie Chan) at the Mitsubishi factory in Japan, where he seems to have some sort of job developing and testing the capabilities of the Mitsubishi Evo III.  We see a montage (first of many) of him racing the car around the test track and working long hours into the night doing some tuning. Fading out of the montage, during one of these late night sessions, he bumps into a beautiful woman driving a Pajero who is in distress because she has lost her diamond earring somewhere in the vastness of the Pajero interior.  Foh, being the keen eyed gentleman he is helps her find it, luckily for Foh the woman turns out to the be the daughter of the head of Mitsubishi.

I am not sure what happened to his testing job but not long after this Foh is dispatched back to Hong Kong to return to work in his uncle’s wrecking and towing yard.  The crew from the yard are pretty tight with the local Police who enlist their support to crack down on street racers with illegally modified cars.  It is during one of these sting operations that a mysterious street racer shows up causing trouble in the neighbourhood in his Nissan.  Foh gives pursuit in a Mitsubishi FTO borrowed from a young camera man.  The camera man and a female reporter called Amy Yip (Anita Yuen) ride along during the chase to get the latest scoop.  Foh’s pursuit helps to apprehend the mysterious racer who turns out to be a bad white guy with a pony tail called ‘Couger’.

With justice now done Foh returns to work at the wrecking yard but is required at the Police station to help with the ongoing investigation into pony tail man.  It turns out pony tail man has some bad connections and he is broken out of the slammer with the help of his hot girlfriend disguised as a lawyer resulting in a destructive shootout between the Police and his gangsters.  Now out of jail pony tail man and his posse show up in the middle of the night at the wrecking yard which they proceed to start wrecking.  The wrecking yard gets wrecked and despite a valiant fight from Foh, his two nieces get kidnapped.

Even at this stage of the film the body and destruction count is very high.  Pony tail man is clearly quite evil but we know so little about him.  Why is he resorting to such destructive levels of violence?  Where is he from?  How is it he can speak badly dubbed English so well?  What has made him resort to the monstrous crime of kidnapping two young women?  It turns out, he just wants Foh to race on his race team…

Presented with this conundrum Foh is conflicted, as I see it, he had three options;

1. Join the race team and save his nieces at the expense of compromising his morals
2. Report the kidnapping, monstrous destruction and evil doing to the Police who have already proved themselves to be incompetent
3. Compete in the race independently try to beat the villain on the assumption that in defeat he would be gracious and give his nieces back

Defying logic, taking a significant gamble and making huge assumptions Foh goes for option 3, fortunately for us this option produces the most likely prospect of further cinematic calamity and many more Mitsubishi advertising opportunities.

Immediately Foh is faced with a problem, he has no race car and the workshop is in a state of destruction.  Never fear, they manage to commandeer a workshop somewhere and start working away to make a decent car.  Out of nowhere a large shipment of parts turn up, it turns out that the parts are exactly the components required to build a Mitsubishi Evo III from scratch, including the car stereo.  Foh and his clandestine band of wrench swingers assemble it perfectly in a suitably sound tracked montage interspersed with dramatic sequences of Foh practising visualisation techniques sitting in a race seat, eyes closed and changing gears.  In the meantime, the young journalist girl, Amy, has turned into something of a stalker, hanging around Foh and his family secretly filming his every move.  Will she turn over her tapes to the villain giving them access to the montage containing Foh’s secret visualisation training regime?  We can only hope she has more pure intentions than that.

With the car assembled Foh and his crew head to Japan for the race.  Although on arrival in Japan instead of getting some practice at the track Foh can’t help himself but track down the villains.  After tracing one of the henchmen to a panchinko parlour, a huge fight ensues between Foh and a lot of Yakuza thugs.  He fights them off amidst a tsunami of loose panchinko ball bearings.  Pony tail man makes an appearance and is disappointed in the incompetence of his yakuza goons but impressed with Foh’s fighting ability.  He is so impressed that he sportingly releases one of Foh’s nieces well fed, unharmed and unmolested.  The remaining niece is of course retained as the bounty for the big race.

On to the race track we go.  It is immediately obvious Foh is going to struggle to qualify for the race.  Maybe because he didn’t practice enough or possibly because he has road tires on his Evo.  Foh pounds out lap after lap just short of the qually mark then in a last gasp he makes the time only to get distracted and crash the Evo immediately afterwards.  Unfortunately, Foh’s car must have a large quantity of fireworks as ballast in the boot, these explode in spectacular fashion torching the car.  Foh’s chances of competing in the race are now in tatters.

But wait!! The head of Mitsubishi suddenly shows up still impressed at Foh’s earring spotting abilities and gives him two factory prepared Mitsubishi GTOs.  It was him that was supplying the parts to build the Evo piece by piece all along.  Presumably the organisers of the race allow Foh to compete but start from the back in a completely different car.  The bad guy with the pony tail is driving a Nissan GTR and starts from 4th…it will be a tough ask to catch him…

I’ll leave it there with the plot spoilers I don’t want to ruin too much more of the pleasure you will get from this film.  The race and dramatic unfolding love story are just too special to ruin. Be warned though there are some horrific, unsurvivable fiery crashes…

Adding to the comedy at this point though is the race scenes were not shot in Japan as originally intended.  The racing scenes in the film were shot in Malaysia where H&S regulations required the scenes to be shot a low speed and sped up later.  This, probably unintentionally, adds to the comedy of the race.

I really wasn’t sure what to make of this film.  It has exciting elements of racing, romance, action, comedy and kung fu all bolted together on to quite a long Mitsubishi commercial.   To pull all of these elements together is tricky and requires a plot that incompetently lurches in many directions suddenly, much like Will Power. Thunderbolt is confusing, poorly constructed, laden with advertising but still entertaining, to borrow one of Mitsubishi’s own slogans, this film is “more than just television, it’s Mitsubishi television”.