Attempting to become the break out piece for Jackie Chan in the U.S., Battle Creek Brawl can’t get off the ground. Everything goes wrong here, from the obvious low budget, plotline you don’t even need to follow to grasp what’s happening on screen, dull action, and humor that doesn’t even come close to being funny. It’s hard to imagine how the director of Enter the Dragon gave us something like this.
Putting Jackie Chan in a relationship with former porn actress Kristine DeBell is hardly the way to get him noticed. With or without Chan, the film takes on a very amateurish look. Direction is bland and the pacing is more concerned with putting as many fights as possible into the running time.
The storyline, what little of it there is, has Jackie becoming involved in an organized crime ring that has been giving his father trouble. Through movie logic, this lands Chan in the Battle Creek Brawl, the sloppiest and most disorganized fighting tournament imaginable. To get there, he needs to fight every extra the crew could muster.
Generally, regardless of the plot, Chan’s charisma can carry a film. Here, he’s not given that freedom. While the fights are in the general comedic style his fans would expect, they run slow, and the choreography is blatantly obvious. Enemies stand there and brace themselves for the incoming blow, and everything seems to be running at half speed.
Worse yet, the fights drag on seemingly for 80% of the film’s running time. Only one is particularly interesting with Chan using a bench to dispatch his generic set of enemies. Countless scenes of him training have been done before, and his early English is tough to understand.
A grating soundtrack could not be more inappropriate, and the script's attempts to make this in any way serious (and earn a highly strict R rating) are beyond terrible. There’s simply nothing to recommend in this early attempt at boosting Jackie Chan’s career. Even die hard fans will struggle to make it through this one. 
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