It's since then been demolished, but there once was the Martin Theatre, the centre for the Kingsport Mall, the first indoor shopping complex for that city. The Martin was from a by-gone era where before the age of the googleplex, only two movies played at a time, and the joint was absolutely nasty.
I mean the popcorn was always stale, stains everywhere, the toilets were broken, there was a visible tear on the screen, and the seats not repaired since the Reagan Administration. It was a favorite place for drug junkies and prostitutes applying their trade.
And yet, I sure miss the Martin if only because it was the site for so many of my cherished childhood movie-going experiences.
Take for instance me and my friends went off to a matinee screening of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. While he already was an action cinema icon to an underground fan community, but it was BRONX where most Americans like us discovered Jackie Chan.
For us boys, Chan was certainly quite different from the other action heroes we grew up with. Unlike Van Damm and Seagal, Chan's body movements wasn't stationary and static, but very fluid....and literally all over the place like a cartoon. He was as charismatic as Bruce Lee, but in a quiet, gentler, more audience-friendly with charming mannerisms.
But most of all, unlike all those action stars, Chan is just isn't so goddamn SERIOUS.
Van Damm is almost always beaten nearly to death this side of a weird-ass sadomasichistic Jesus Christ complex. Seagal is always stone cold with his dead-calm dialogue, and Lee is either being philosophical fluffy about a code of honor while brutally killing his enemies.
No, Chan is more of the comic clown who rather avoid fighting but always seems to get trapped in sticky situations and has to use his fists and body to escape.
It's just like Buster Keaton, but if he had learned kung fu or got bored by trying to stop a train.
In reflection, BRONX is actually a lousy movie. The dubbing is GODZILLA bad, the acting is Soap Opera terrible, there are lots better Chan movies (DRUNKEN MASTER II)and well, the plot is a shabby excuse for the real show.
In a way, watching a Chan flick is like watching a Jeff Hardy wrestling match. Sometimes you may get good kayfabe storyline heat to cook up the in-ring storytelling, but usually you don't.
But you're guaranteed some aerobatic flips, injury-begging jumps, and once a blue moon, a death-defying "spot" that take your breath away. Like BRONX, its a glorified Stunt Show, which it should be simply viewed as.
From squeezing through a shopping cart to spider-crawling parking garages to avoiding death-collisions with buses to leaping onto a runaway hovercraft, we boys were shocked by seeing Chan doing all of this crazyness himself, and doing it simply for a movie.
Then seeing the blooper reel afterwards where Chan breaks his ankle, only to go back to work with a painted-sock. Hell, one spot in general, if he doesn't slide down a car's roof-door quick enough, a motorbike would have forced the movie to be retitled RUMBLE IN MY GROIN.
With all that, and his immortal jump across a city street onto a fire escape WITHOUT any safety catch, to us boys he was "hardcore" before we found Mick Foley and ECW.
We would then watch all his other pictures, either already on video before several of those same titles were re-released in theatres. Much like what happened after ENTER THE DRAGON and Lee's demise, Chan's earlier work flooded the American scene. Hell, he's the only reason why I went to see RUSH HOUR in theatres.
That said, I do remember now a brutal scene that didn't involve falling or getting hurt on Chan's behalf. You have this punk gang, which somehow survived the early 80s New York and mullets, prepping up baseball bats and beer bottles and you think, "yes another brawl!"
Instead, they play baseball with the empty bottles into Chan, and the shattered flying glass cuts him up this side of DIE HARD, blood everywhere.
