Rumble in the Bronx

San Francisco Examiner Barry Walters

Rumble in the Bronx has the explosive escapades that Stallone/Schwarzenegger followers crave - hair-raising free falls, hovercrafts out of control, crazed turf wars, collapsing buildings, gun-happy gangsters and other boy-film staples - plus the kind of oddball comedy and independent spirit usually found only outside the current Hollywood empire. Chan is a true artist of a genre that ordinarily does all it can to avoid art.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Like all Jackie Chan films, this one works best as a rousing action film. From beginning to end, Rumble is filled with imaginative and breathtaking stunts (all done by Chan sans stuntman) and a succession of epic fight scenes that are hypnotic, exhilarating, masterfully choreographed and great fun. [23 Feb 1996, p.3]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Freed from the tiresome constraints of plot and character, Rumble in the Bronx is the distilled essence of action entertainment. [27 Feb 1996, p.D1]

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Kinetic, fizzy, delivering more bounce to the ounce than anything out there right now, "Rumble in the Bronx" is my kind of mindless fun. [23 Feb 1996]

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Chan is so good, so much fun to watch, that he often transcends his vehicles. And that's the case with Rumble in the Bronx, his big bid to crack the American market. [23 Feb 1996, p.C]

USA Today Mike Clark

Talk about the limitations of using the four-star rating system to assess a movie both glorious and dreadful, with the dreadful components glorious as well in their own bent way. [23 Feb 1996, p.1D]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Any attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile. The whole point is Jackie Chan, he does what he does better than anybody. He's having fun. If we allow ourselves to get in the right frame of mind, so are we.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The movie is a giddy triple somersault of a film that makes no sense whatsoever, although in its best moments it is as much fun to watch as a death-defying circus act.

Newsweek David Ansen

This is a good introduction to the affable Chan persona. The comedy is broad, the inner-city Americana hilariously off-base, and the English dubbing may prove disconcerting to U.S. audiences. But the cheesiness is part of the fun.

Time Richard Corliss

You watch these impossible stunts with fear and gratitude for the hardest-working man in show biz. To see your first Jackie Chan movie is to fall in love with what the movies once were: a comic ballet of bodies in motion.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

For serenely rising above all the foolishness is Chan himself, a performer whose belief in broad and harmless fun gives his films a clear and present connection to the classic silent comedies to go along with its action fixation. For once a film's ad line has a whiff of truth about it: "No Fear. No Stuntman. No Equal." [23 Feb 1996, p.1]

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Rumble in the Bronx never quite achieves the smack-you-around zest of Chan's Hong Kong pictures. Still, it's hard to dislike a movie with such a friendly sense of the preposterous.

Austin Chronicle Joey O'Bryan

While not quite up to the standard of Chan's finest movies, Rumble in the Bronx is fast-paced, funny, and exciting, and should serve as a nice introduction for the uninitiated to the hyperactive world of Hong Kong action filmmaking.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Although Rumble in the Bronx isn't Chan's best work it's still ninety minutes of solid, campy entertainment. Most of the running time is devoted to the slickly choreographed action scenes, leaving virtually no room for plot or character development.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A mainly routine Hong Kong action film from fleet and floppy-haired action hero Jackie Chan. It's light on plot and character, but the stunts are well staged.

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

The movie is disjointed and, at times, unintentionally funny, but its ineptitude is so good-natured that it makes a charming alternative to the mind-numbing professionalism of American action movies. [23 Feb 1996]

Village Voice Gary Dauphin

This cross-cultural circulation of proto-gangster fantasies is ultimately Rumble in the Bronx's lasting irony and perhaps even the source of its outsized hilarity. Better to laugh than to dwell on the fact that not only has Jackie Chan made a lame "American" movie, but he's plagiarized Michael Jackson's "Bad" video to boot. [27 Feb 1996]

TV Guide Staff (Not credited)

Filmed in Vancouver (which looks like nobody's idea of the Bronx), the film is a throwback to the hoary chop-socky conventions that gave Hong Kong cinema its shabby reputation.

Variety Derek Elley

Though Chan wins his usual stripes for death-defying... the movie ends on a dramatically unsatisfying note.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's not often you find a movie as exciting and awful as Rumble in the Bronx. But the sole aim of this so-bad-it's-funny action picture is to introduce Jackie Chan to American audiences. In that narrow sense, it's completely successful.

Washington Post Richard Harrington

With his mop-top cut and silly grin, Chan cuts an amiable figure, but while this film may confirm his skills and appeal to those already familiar with his better work, it's not likely to convert anyone else.

Empire Simon Braund

Judged by any rational standards, Rumble is absolute bollocks, but it at least has some pretty darned amazing Chan fight scenes.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An awkward hybrid of Asian and American film techniques. It's also an uninvolving story that casts Chan in the role of a fish out of water and gives him little opportunity to show his exuberant personality.