Customer Reviews

Meltdown [VHS]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Take a plot stolen from Die Hard and mix it together with poking fun at Jackie Chan and you've got High Risk, one of Wong Jing and Jet Li's best efforts. Jet Li plays the stuntman for Asia's leading action hero, who's famous for doing his own stunts (wink, wink). The parody of Jackie Chan is hilarious, depicting "Frankie" as a bumbling boob with an inflated movie star ego. The whole movie moves briskly and has enough decent action and oddball humor to keep one deeply entertained. I rank it up there as one of Jet li's best and as one of the funnier Hong Kong movies I've seen. Definitely worth owning if you're a Hong Kong fan.

I just finished watching this movie and I have to say it was money well spent.

The best description of High Risk would be a homage to Die Hard and a parody of Jackie Chan. Jet Li plays a former bomb squad commander who's last run in with the villain cost him his family. He has since has become the double and bodyguard of Frankie, a Kung Fu superstar. Frankie is a cowardly, boozing, womanizer who has forgotten how he achieved his stardom.

Various elements play like Die Hard scenes including the characters and dialog. Mixed in with this are other subplots and some original scenes (at least to me). I won't spoil them by elaborating. Suffice to say, High Risk is an excellent blend of comedy, action (both martial arts and gunplay) and suspense with some romance thrown in. This movie does not take itself too seriously. Sometimes it parodies the martial arts genre with its voices, dialog and facial expressions!

On the down side, the subtitles leave something to be desired, blending into the background and being poorly translated on occasion. The disc has no features, just different subtitles. The video quality is average, audio Dolby Digital 2.0/Pro-Logic.

Any fan of Jet Li, Hong Kong films or action in general will enjoy this a lot. There is little if any wire Fu.

How great of a film is DIE HARD? DIE HARD left such an indelible mark in cinema that movie producers all over the world have been rehashing its film premise ever since. MELTDOWN (aka SHU DAN LONG WEI, aka HIGH RISK), released in 1995, is only one film of many which blatantly [...] Bruce Willis's action opus. On its own merit, MELTDOWN isn't bad but isn't near the top of Jet Li's best flicks in terms of acting, storyline, or kung fu throwdowns. What it's got going for it is its infusion of mayhem and graphic violence, so if you're into that (and what dude isn't?), then it's good times for the viewer.

The far-fetched plot: A deadly early encounter with a terrorist mastermind simply known as the Doctor leaves military Lieutenant Kit Li (Jet Li) a widowed man feeling guilt and in search of revenge. Two years later, Li is now toiling away as a bodyguard to crass, world-renowned kung fu movie star Frankie Lone (Jackie Cheung), who much like Jackie Chan, insists on performing his own stunts. But, unbeknownst to the public, Li actually also serves as Frankie's stunt double on occasions when Frankie has had his drink on. Frankie used to be a heralded martial artist but has "forgotten" the wushu way and is now basically a craven womanizer.

When the posh Grandeur Hotel hosts an invaluable set of Russian jewels, it becomes the point of convergence for Kit, Frankie, and the Doctor and his gang of terrorists. Kit, at last, has a chance to atone for his blunder two years ago. Can he find a way to overcome the mastermind's cunning and ruthlessness? And can Frankie find his long-missing kung fu? Will the plucky girl reporter find love with Kit? Will the dubious film director be defenestrated? Can Jackie Chan forgive MELTDOWN for making a caricature of his persona?

I don't recall the ratio but it seems to me that Jet Li wields a gun here more than he resorts to chop socky. The action sequences are still dang tootin' nifty, but I guess the producers really were going for that DIE HARD sensibility, ergo more firearms. Jet Li remains a very likable persona and his performance is pretty good here as he plays up the stoic, heroic role. As for Jackie Cheung - you either like his performance or you want to slap him silly. I got very annoyed with his incessant mugging and I personally didn't think he was funny, but I know friends who did. His character was meant to be a spoof of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, but I didn't much care for it.

Too, the editing staff should've been canned for the inconsistencies left in. There's a scene in which Frankie uses a shoe as a decoy, but the very next moment reveals Frankie shod on both feet. How Kit and the cop got the car out of the elevator to pull out a surprise on the terrorists is a mystery to me. There are several "people" falling out of the skyscraper who are too obviously fake dummies. See what I mean?

Now, I saw MELTDOWN on dvd, dubbed in typically over-the-top English. I just wished I'd screened it in the original Chinese or Cantonese. As I've said elsewhere, more often than not, foreign movies lose something in translation. There's a chance Cheung wouldn't be as grating if he was presented in his native lingo. But, overall, despite its annoyances, MELTDOWN is worth watching for its crazy stunts and fierce violence. And for Jet Li, of course.

High Risk is an action packed movie. Not like anything Hollywood has to offer. This is real HK action. Jet Li plays the role of a Stunt-double/ Bodyguard to Jacky Cheung. The first part of the movie really sets the pace of the rest of the film with explosive action. There are some great fight clips and lots of comedy. This is not a Hollywood movie so the effects are not perfect. One of the coolest clips was of the car in the elevator.

The DVD had no options other than the choice of Cantonese or Mandarin it did not even have a menu. Further more the subtitles where small and hard to read and where fixed English and Chinese, so you could not turn them off if you wanted. Other than that the picture quality was Great.

(I took of 2 stars for the lack of options and the hard to read subtitles)

This is a new style of film for Jet Li. True there is some of the greatest action sceens ever shot in this film but mosst of the film is based on making fun of the Hong Kong film bissness. While Jet's charater Kit Li does have some great fights in the movie the best fight is the fight near the end of the movie involving Frankie Loan(I think that's how you spell it who's played be Jackie Cheung), who hires Kit as a bodyguard, and Kong (I don't know who plays him). Frankie is a parody of Bruce Lee(The greatest martial artist ever) and Jackie Chan (I don't really see the Jackie Chan parody but I can uderstand how some people will.) The final fight sceen also reminds me of a Bruce Lee style fight (Jackie even wears a yellow and black jumpsuit like the one Lee wears in his final movie "The Game Of Death"). This is a masterwork of Hong Kong comedy and action. If you are not a fan of both of these I wold be wary of buying this moive.

Great film for Jet Li fans.Not a lot of fighting but what there is is classic Jet Li, and worth the viewing.Lots of Hong Kong humor, making it a great film to watch again.

I am reviewing the movie as I saw it in the theaters so I can not vouch for any loss of quality that will happen when it gets transferred to video. Knowing that Tai Seng is probably handling it, there is probably a couple of stars that you want to mentally calculate off of this review.

This movie is Diehard with Jackie Cheung playing Jackie Chan (and he really is a decent actor in his own right, but he's usually playing brooding sad roles. He's definitely not a Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Lai, etc.) and stealing the movie out from underneath Jet Li's oh-so-serious cop with a mission. His moves are evil, his imitation is over the top. He's just kinetic and you even like him when he's whining.

Jet Li for the most part is stuck playing the straight man which some times works but most of the time he looks lost (Bodyguard from Beijing, Lethal Weapon 4) In this movie he has enough of a smoldering vibe going that you don't mind that he's a bit stiff. Besides Jackie Cheung, the villains are beautifully campy and evil, especially in the piano playing scene.

THe plotline is DieHard, except I don't remember Bruce Willis ever running over the villains with a car that was taken up the elevator. Actually the plot is Die Hard if there was no semblence of reality in Die Hard, which is beautiful, because one of the fun things about Hong Kong action movies is that they don't care that it doesn't make sense. American action movies are wildly contrived to find some semblence of believability like the hero running out of bullets every so often, or a flesh wound that incapacitates him for a second. Hong Kong movies don't care.

This is a fun movie and one of the better Jet Li movies out there. Buy it now before someone dubs it.

Meltdown has a lot of great things going for it and a lot of stupid things. This is an action packed movie that has some great fights and some other great action scenes. There are a lot of cool characcters in the film, but unfortunately there are plenty of stupid ones as well. The story is ok but the dubbing ruins everything, unless you get your hands on the original Chinese version. The guy that dubs Jet Li's voice sounds...like...he...is.....acting like...William....Shatner acts on the.....original.......Star.....Trek series.

Kit (played by Jet Li) is Frankie Lone's bodyguard, a famous stuntman who has become a disspointment and a drunk coward to those closest to him. He is a big fraud, and Kit has been accustomed to covering for his stunts while not taking the credit. Frankie and Kit become part of a major hostage crisis in a fine HK hotel during a jewelry exhibit. Kit encounters the same men again, two years after they killed his wife and a bus full of school kids.

There are two villains in the movie that are pretty awesome. The first, whose name I can't remember, fights Jet Li about 3/4 through the movie. It is my favorite fight scene of the movie and one of my favorite Jet Li fight scenes in any movie. The fight is intense and quick, beginning with gun shots, then some good ol fancy martial arts, finally ending with an interesting swordsfight, where Kit improvises by using a lighting rod from the ceiling. The other villain is Kong, played by Billy Chau (also appeared as Jet Li's nemesis in Fist of Legend). Unfortunately, Kong only has a very quick fight against Kit early in the movie, but he provides the final fight of the movie against Frankie, lasting a good 5 minutes and again combining martial arts with weapons. Its a good fight, but the previous fight mentioned was much better.

Aside from these great fights, there is a lot of action consisting of lots of gunfire, driving a minivan through the hotel, and even bringing a helicopter into one of the upper stories, creating quite a disaster.

Its the dubbing and the rest of the characters that becomes complete annoyance throughout the film. There is also dumb humor that fails to be funny, and ends up being really cheesy and unsuccessful at creating comedy.

The Chinese language version should provide a better experience for this movie, unfortunately subtitles distract me too. However, if action is all you are after grab Meltdown and it will give you want you want.

I bought this DVD hoping it would have a subtitle option (English subtitles w original soundtrack), but it doesn't. I also own a video of the original movie, "High Risk," which I find more entertaining. The dubbed dialogue on the DVD is REALLY silly (as is the movie, which is OK). . .a few of the lines are funnier than the original, but so many hilarious lines are changed (to only marginally funny). Jacky Cheung's real voice is way funnier than the dubbed one. PLUS annoying rap soundtrack on the dubbed version, ugh.

i liked the martial arts the most in this movie, I can say that Jet Li is one of my favorite martial Artists. this is a basic Chinese rip off of Die hard, but it's still cool...don't forget funny as well.