Imagine slowly looking up and getting a jaw full of knee, BAM! This is the ’80s classic review featuring the movie called “Wheels on Meals” starring Jackie Chan and directed by Sammo Hung.
In 1984, Chan and Benny “the Jet” Urquidez filmed one of the best fight sequences ever captured on film. Though these kinds of movies have choreographed scenes, it is still one of the best fight scenes ever.
The story is about two (Chan and Yuen Biao) Chinese cousins living in Spain, running a fast-food restaurant from their van. A wannabe detective (Hung) is hired to find a missing girl (Lola Forner) who belongs to this royal family. Chan and Biao meet her at a mental hospital were Biao’s father and Forner’s mother are falling in love. As the story progresses, Forner begins to work with both cousins. Eventually, a gang tries to kidnap her, and that’s where the story begins to get good.
The stunts and the comedy are priceless. There is one scene where Chan jumps off a balcony and bounces off an awning, then does a front flip and lands on his feet. Chan notices the owner of the awning and turns around to say “hola.” Biao needs to get down too. So, Chan signals him not to jump, but Biao misunderstood what he meant. The owner removes the awning, and Biao lands on his butt with some sound effects marking his fall.
At the beginning of the movie, both cousins are getting ready for a typical day at their job. When they arrive at their site, a motorcycle gang scares away the customers causing Chan and Biao to fight them. A crowd gathers around the fight, which ends pretty fast. From a distance, two more motorcycle gang members are driving toward Chan and Biao. This stunt was in slow motion, which captured my eye almost instantly. Biao tackles one member off of his motorcycle, and Chan dropkicked the other one off of his motorcycle. I always wonder how many times it took to film this piece. I have always wanted to dropkick somebody like that, but the producers of “Wheels” took it up to the next level by drop- kicking someone off of a motorcycle!
The story line might be a little confusing at first, but once you watch it the second time then everything else will make sense. When a gang tries to kidnap Forner, Hung asks Chan and Biao to help him find her and stop the gang. The team stops the gang from the streets of Barcelona to a car chase on the road.
Eventually, the main bad guy (who sends the gang to capture Forner) gets tired of his gang’s failing, so he sends his top dogs to get the job done. Urquidez leads the kidnapping group and eventually manages to kidnap Forner and her mother.
The director really saved the best for last because the last 30 minutes of the movie will leave you breathless. Chan, Biao and Hung have to sneak in the bad guy’s castle to save the girls. Eventually, Chan and Biao get caught where they are both invited to attend a formal dinner with the bad guy and the girls. Chan throws soup at the bad guy, and this causes the final fight to begin. It’s truly hard to describe how awesome this scene was. It was funny, unexpected, intense, amazing. It was all of the above, basically.
Chan and Urquidez go fist to fist with a fight scene that puts some of the most recent fight scenes to shame. The speed of the punches and kicks were so awesome that Urquidez actually blows out some nearby candles. This is definitely a classic must-see kung-fu movie. The new Jackie Chan movies are great, but this one is one of the best.