Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Anssi Vartiainen Jackie Chan's first attempt to break through into the American market and a famous flop in any meaning of the word. I can definitely see why. And it's not Chan that's at fault here, except perhaps in that he should have picked a better movie to star in. Because, quite honestly, aside from his enjoyable presence, the rest of the film is very amateurish.The story is barely there, first and foremost of all. A Chinese (Chan) man living in Chicago gets threatened by the mob and is forced to join a fighting tournament after the boss sees his martial arts skills. A training montage, some fights, et cetera. You know exactly how it goes. Exactly. The movie is short as it is and it insist on dragging us through every tired cliché there is. If you've seen any martial arts film or even any gangster film, you've seen this film as well. It's uninspired in the worst possible way.And sure, Jackie Chan is a great martial artist and even an engaging actor, if given even halfway decent material to work with. But he cannot work miracles and that's what would have been required here.Sure, see the film if you want to say you've seen all of Chan's films. And it's not like it's offensively bad. Just boring. Just very, very, very boring. Which is sometimes an even greater crime.

leonblackwood Review: This movie was a big deal when it was released during the 80's, because it was one of the first Western movies starring Jackie Chan, which were fully English. The main problem that I found with the film is that the action scenes are pretty poor, which is surprising for a Chan movie, and the storyline wasn't that great. Jackie Chan plays Jerry Kwan whose father is being bullied by the local gangsters because he won't pay them protection money for his restaurant. When Jerry bumps into the gangsters while they are leaving his father's place, he uses his Kung Fu skills to fight them off and he warns them not to come back again. The mobsters then tell the head boss, Dominici (Jose Ferrer), about his Kung Fu skills and he decides to use him for the Battle Creek Brawl competition, we're various fighters come together to battle for a cash price. As Jerry is reluctant to fight in the competition, Dominici kidnaps his brothers fiancé, who has just arrived from Hong Kong. After some training with his uncle Herbert (Mako), he enters the competition to fight for her release. There are some other elements to the storyline but I don't want to spoil it for those people who haven't watched it before. Like many Chan movies, there is a lot of weak comedy throughout the movie, especially during the fighting scenes, so I was quite put off from the beginning. I also was expecting a big showdown at the end but it turned out to be a bunch of heavyweight men, wrestling with each other. Chan looked tiny compared to his opponents and the silly Kung Fu moves that he used against them, was pretty poor. The acting wasn't bad and I liked the chemistry between Chan and Mako but the film looked extremely dated and the comedy was just not that funny. Average!Round-Up: This movie was written and directed by Robert Clouse, who brought you Enter The Dragon, Black Belt Jones, Game Of Death, China O'Brien I & II and Ironheart. He sadly died of kidney failure in 1997, at the age of 68 but he firmly put his stamp in cinema with the movies that he made with Bruce Lee. I don't think that this movie was in the same ball park as Enter The Dragon or Game Of Death but he can honestly say that he had a hand in bringing Chan to a Western market before he died. Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: $8.5millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their action/martial arts/crime/comedies starring Jackie Chan, Jose Ferrer, Kristine DeBell, David Sheiner, Mako and Larry Drake. 3/10

chow913 Jackie Chan's first crossover into the American market was a bomb. Chan himself said that this and another prohibition era gangster film were by far his worst movies and he regretted making them. Having seen some of Chan's really low budget Hong Kong and Taiwanese films, I beg to differ.Chan's more recent American crossover attempts were far worse, like the 'Rush Hour' and 'Shanghai Noon' series.Actually 'Battle Creek Brawl' isn't nearly as bad as its made out to be. The production quality and acting is high.Much like 'The Brady Varity Show' the film has a shock effect of seeing Chan outside of his natural element, in prohibition era Chicago.It's also interesting to hear how Chan's English wasn't any worse in 1980. (or rather that it hasn't improved even in 33 years) The film gets off the a great start with Chan casually doing sit up while hanging upside down by his shoes from a bridge without any safety net! The problem is there aren't enough scenes like this. We don't get the great fight and chase scenes we've come to expect from Chan. He usually ends up fighting other martial artists. However, when he's up against Chicago gangsters there's no challenge and no thrill.In conclusion, there's nothing to hate about 'Battle Creek Brawl' but there's very little to love as well.Hopefully Chan would have learned by now that his Hong Kong action comedy style was a winning formula he should never deviate from. Then we would never have to endure the horrible 'Rush Hour' and 'Shanghai Noon' series!

Don Bendell "After the enormous success in Hong Kong of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, Jackie Chan found himself in a dilemma. He was still under contract to the inept director Lo Wei, who was trying to make Chan into the next Bruce Lee. Chan had long resented trying to be molded into Lee, and with his recent success, he thought he had proved that other forms of martial arts films could do well. However, Lo thought the same formula he had used with Lee on Fist of Fury would work for Chan, and didn't hesitate to keep using it over and over, even though the dismal box office returns told him otherwise. Eventually, Chan walked out on Lo in disgust during the filming of Fearless Hyena 2 and signed with the Golden Harvest studio. Chan thought Golden Harvest's success would free him from Lo's clutches, but Lo had some tricks up his sleeve. He was connected with the Triads (Hong Kong gangsters) and sent thugs to the set to threaten Chan. Eventually, things got so bad that Chan's manager Willie Chan suggested that he travel to America for his first starring role in the States.On the surface, things looked good. The movie was being backed by the Warner Bros. studio and would have a budget bigger than any of Chan's Hong Kong movies, and was going to be directed by Robert Clouse, who had helmed the most popular kung fu film of all time, Enter the Dragon. Thematically, it was to have contained many elements from the Hollywood Golden Age (films from the 1930's and 40's) that Chan admired so much. In fact, the film was pitched to Chan as an "Eastern Western" -- something that was a dream idea of Chan's. However, one thing lurked beneath the surface -- something that would make Chan miserable and turn this film into the horrible mish-mash that it is. Everyone involved -- the producers, the director, the studio -- wanted Chan to become the thing he had run away from in Hong Kong. They wanted him to become the next Bruce Lee.The film's shadow of a plot revolves around Chan inadvertently putting the proverbial monkey wrench into gangster Jose Ferrer's plans. Eventually, Ferrer puts the squeeze on Chan's family and Chan finds himself competing in a bare-knuckle fighting tournament to save the family business (which is, of course, a laundry). Really, the particulars don't matter. This movie's horrible from beginning to end. The script, the cinematography, the acting -- they're all bad. Probably the biggest disappointment are the fight sequences. No one on the set allowed Chan any input at all, and as such, well, they're just pathetic. One of the movie's major sequences has Chan battling the gangsters during a roller-skating race. Now, this could actually be good; anyone who's seen Rollerball could attest to that. But in this movie, it comes off as what it is -- a bunch of people who can barely skate attempting to create a fight scene under the supervison of a director who has no idea of what his star can do.This may (and I stress may) be worth a look for major Chan fans who want to see his US debut. But, honestly, this kind of movie is better left forgotten.And to wrap up the long-winded story I've set up in this review, Chan was able to go back to Hong Kong via some help from old-school star Jimmy Wang Yu, who had his own Triad connections. He was eventually able to make his Eastern Western (albeit twenty years later) with Shanghai Noon. After the dismal failure of the film, Robert Clouse found himself regulated to doing B-list martial arts movies... and, in perhaps one of the most pathetic attempts to cover ones' tracks, later stated in the documentary The Deadliest Art that Chan was "one of the best people he had ever worked with."