Tonal shifts and hard cuts from comedy to extreme violence are often an issue with action films from Hong Kong in the 1980s and early '90s. It often feels like a cultural difference; something unique to this period and region in cinema. The earliest examples of kung fu comedy showcase this to some extent, for example the opening death from Drunken Master which effectively introduces the villain, but is quickly dropped in favour of wacky teenage hi-jinks and disobedience. Later it can be seen in something like Armor of God II: Operation Condor at which point it's evolved into a far more extreme version of this trope. An unarmed group of desert travellers is brutally killed by mercenaries, immediately before a series of juvenile gags involving Jackie Chan and his companions. There are many examples, but in some ways the tonal incongruities from Jet Li's Meltdown (aka High Risk) are amongst the most absurd.
In an opening set piece, bomb disposal officer Kit (Li) is faced with a pretty unpleasant situation as his wife and child are put into a bus wired to explode at the school she was teaching at. It's pretty tense as he tries to figure out a high-techdevice while being taunted a villain known only as The Doctor (director Kelvin Wong). But things are not what they first seem. There are two elements here that stand out; firstly that it's obvious this is stolen from Speed which came out the year before (this won't be the only movie being blatantly copied here). Secondly, mere seconds after this all goes awry and time jumps forward several years, it becomes clear that this serious thriller atmosphere is going to come and go at the drop of a hat in favour of childish jokes and comedy actors over doing things.
In one of the most ridiculous examples of this serious meets nonsense bait and switch, we now find Kit working for a film company as a stunt man. He's doubling Frankie Lone (Jackie Cheung) a direct parody of Jackie Chan, complete with his logo emblazoned on a stunt team and a crowd of admirers. Frankie is a drunken womaniser who fakes his work with the help of Kit, so you can easily see how this is all a direct response to Kelvin Wong's experience working with Chan on comic adaptation City Hunter. Which also a take on Western action blockbusters filled with cartoon caricatures and puerile jokes. I guess he just really likes brutal extortion and kidnapping plots mixed with heavy handed gags?
After a lot of messing around and the introduction of Kong (Billy Chow) a henchman who wants to fight Frankie despite his obvious lack of skills, the plot finally gets moving. At a big event a lot of valuable jewels are being shown to an exclusive guest list inside a city high rise, and The Doctor and his crew are on route to crash the party. It's here the biggest and most shameless rip-offs take place, as scenes from Die Hard play out, in some cases verbatim with others being remixed. One of the villains has a brother who is killed. The event manager doesn't know the key codes to the jewels. Classical music plays. Kit jumps from a high window to escape an explosion. A helicopter crashes in the the building. Frankie loses not his shoes... but his trousers.
There are all kinds of visual cues and nods here, some that are probably easy to miss as they start to flood the screen. But for all this parody, homage and theft this is still just an action movie. Fortunately on those terms it does deliver once things get going. You just have to get past a lot of weird moments involving land mines on film sets and reporters being shaken upside down to remove video tapes from inside their shirts. However, some moments are just as impressive as they are absurd. There are burning cars being driven out of elevators and a helicopter accident which causes way more pyrotechnic mayhem than should be possible. Frankie eventually has to become a real hero as you'd expect, and while the whole Bruce Lee nun-chuck and yellow jumpsuit combo has been done to death they do at least throw in some good stunts and fight work.
However the comedy is always threatening to rear its head at every opportunity, even where it makes no sense. A reporter hiding in a bathroom cubicle is found out, but instead of having her killed or captured one of the henchmen throws a huge amount of snakes and lizards into the room for some reason. Did he bring them along just in case this situation occurred... and where was he hiding them? Someone really wanted to have Frankie complaining about his rear end being poisoned by a snake (though this random sub-plot does tie into the ending). In many ways this is a big mess that will have you laughing, cringing and yelling at the screen. But it's still all guilty pleasure material in the end for those looking for a mixture of hard hitting set pieces, fight choreography... and total nonsense.
3/5
