His Rumble In The Bronx, Super Cop and First Strike won him the appreciation of mainstream audience.

And now there is Mr. Nice Guy in which Chan plays a TV chef, hosting a popular cooking show ‘What’s Cooking Tonight? with his good friend and surrogate father Baggio. He lives and works in Melbourne, Australia (where the bulk of the film was shot). Though he lives a comfortable life, Chan yearns for some adventure to make his drab life exciting. And the adventure happens sooner than expected. An intrepid lady TV reporter Diana (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) stumbles onto a shoot-out between two rival drug-dealers and captures it on a video tape. Mafia boss Giancarlo (Richard Norton), realising he’s been caught in the act on film, sends his henchmen to retrieve the offending tape, at all costs. Diana runs into Chan, who helps her escape from the don’s clutches. In the confusion, the shoot-out video is switched with a tape of Chan’s cooking show. Now that the offending film is in Chan’s possession, the mafiosi are after him, as are, incidentally, a rival gang.

Chan’s Taiwanese girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee), arrives, much to the distress of another female friend (Karen McLymont), who secretly is in love with him. Miki turns up just in time to be dragged around as Chan tries to evade the villains. After he and his friends are finally captured, Chan manages to escape, commandeer a giant mining truck and use it to demolish Giancarlo’s palatial abode.

The film makes excellent use of Melbourne’s range of locations, and a few of the set-pieces work. In one scene, Chan swings from a giant inflatable gorilla, in another he and his pursuers run in and out of a maze of doorways, while in a third scene, Chan fights on a horse and carriage, racing through the heart of Melbourne. The climax, shot outside of Sydney, certainly ends the film with a bang, and one can’t help but marvel at the detail employed in the construction of Giancarlo’s lair. The mafia don’s den is a sight for sore eyes and puts the production values of most Hong Kong-produced films to shame.

If there is any hitch in the film, it’s the absence of any substantial fight sequences. Chan’s fans will definitely bemoan the fact that Mr. Nice Guy does not have stand-out fight sequences like the ones seen in Rumble In The Bronx or First Strike. There’s not one battle in the film that’s more than just a quick flurry of blows. One reason for this might be that Chan’s enemies in the film are all Westerners, and it’s difficult for foreign stuntmen to execute the kind of complicated sequences that Chan’s own team can. The only martial arts encounter in the film is a hokey affair, in which Jackie has his hands and feet tied with rubber bands, while the mafia don kicks him around. Chan, using a mining truck to exact his revenge in the end, is definitely a waste of talent, when the action-hero could have delighted his fans with a kung-fu throw-down. What’s surprising is that the director of the film Sammo Hung, who earlier presented Chan as an extraordinary screen-fighter in films like Wheels On Meals and Dragons Forever, doesn’t give him a chance to kick his way around in this film.

Besides Chan, it is actor Richard Norton who delights in the film. He comes up with a funny performance as the fastidious, cigar-puffing mafia don. Mr. Nice Guy makes full use of Norton’s charishma and this role should help him bag a wider range of roles. The remaining Australian cast doesn’t make much of an impact. Newcomer Miki Lee is just a decorative piece, and has nothing much to do besides pouting and shouting “Jackie!” Yet Chan’s fans wouldn’t want to miss this flick which has some breath-taking stunts, and an adventure, Chan-style.