Jackie Chan’s Most Underrated ‘90s Action Movie Is Now Free to Watch Online

We cannot lie that it is a bit disconcerting that one of the greatest studios in film history is now licensing some of their deeper cut faves to YouTube. But Max’s loss is about to be everyone else’s gain, as some real obscure gems from Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema’s back catalogs have quietly found their way to the most popular video sharing website on the globe. As of press time, more than 30 Warners-owned films have been dropped in full and for free on YouTube, including John Milius’ underrated The Wind and the Lion (a 1975 movie where Sean Connery plays a North African rebel…), Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, and… one especially frothy gem from a turning point in Jackie Chan‘s career.

Released in 1997, Mr. Nice Guy was one of the last Hong Kong films Chan made before pivoting to Hollywood for a while, beginning with Rush Hour, which released the following year. But whereas many of those Hollywood movies, especially the ones directed by Brett Ratner, didn’t seem to know how to use Jackie’s strengths, Mr. Nice Guy was a Golden Harvest Production directed by Chan’s greatest directorial collaborator, Sammo Hung.

Like Chan, Hung was instrumental in ushering in the Hong Kong New Wave movement of the 1980s, with both of the martial artists and Kung fu performers being addressed on film sets as “Dai Goh” (Big Brother). After they worked together, with Hung often behind the camera—and sometimes in front of it—the director became known as “Biggest Big Brother” on the set.

In the case of Mr. Nice Guy, that camaraderie was channeled into a project that obviously had one eye on the growing Western market for martial arts flicks. While Nice Guy is a Golden Harvest production (the studio behind genre classics like Enter the Dragon and Chan’s own Police Story franchise), it was also a co-production with New Line Cinema, hence Warner Bros. Discovery’s current ownership. It also filmed mostly in the English language and on location in Melbourne, Australia.

And it’s a high-kickin’, high-flyin’ delight.

With a premise so flimsy you half expect to see Chan punch his way through a copy of the script, the film finds Jackie in the role of… Jackie, a popular TV chef on Australian morning television. And like the real-life Chan’s media image, this fictional Jackie is just a really nice guy when a beautiful journalist in distress (the Power Rangers movie’s Gabrielle Fitzpatrick) bumps into him as she is fleeing local mobsters. See, Fitzpatrick’s reporter has proof that an Italian mafioso (Richard Norton) murdered a local street gang during a cocaine deal gone bad. Now the hoods are after her and she must run in her underwear into Jackie, who is such a good dude he ends up manhandling these tough guys for her. But now they’re also after him, just as his long-distance girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee) is visiting, and…

Look, the plot is paper thin. The point is the movie leans into what Jackie, Sammo, and ‘90s era Golden Harvest did best: spectacular acrobatic fight sequences that utilized props, humor, and Chan’s natural charisma to effervescent effect.

In Mr. Nice Guy, you’ll see Jackie fight on school buses, jump for realsies off cranes above Yarra River, and turn a construction site into a playground worthy of Charlie Chaplin as he uses cement mixers, buzz saws, and sledge hammers to bounce his way around a half-dozen opponents. In the climax, he even duels with a 120-ton mining vehicle.

The film’s elaborate fight sequences also hold the distinction of being where the late great fight choreographer Brad Allan got his start on Chan’s stunt team. Allan would go on to choreograph the fight sequences in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The World’s End, Kick-Ass, Wonder Woman, and the Kingsman movies before his passing in 2021.

Mr. Nice Guy is exactly what you want out of a Jackie Chan movie: it’s light, it’s frothy, and the stunt work alternates between inducing chuckles and awe. It’s also relatively forgotten. So now that you can watch it for free on YouTube, it’s perhaps time to discover that nice guys really can finish first.

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