Teamworking Day: The Complete Rumble in the Bronx Breakdown, Part 2 🌭

Seanbaby: Rumble in the Bronx follows the classic 10-Act Jackie Chan film structure (see below), and we set out to find the best moment from each one. Not the best sequences or stunts — that’s not what makes this movie magical. We wanted to rate those treasured moments in between Jackie Chan’s sweet suicide attempts. We tallied our votes with those of six Rumble in the Bronx experts (Eddie Doty, Timmy Leahy, Alan Chang, Evan Trask, Josh S, and Michael Swaim) to create this, the once-and-for-all list of most delightful Rumble in the Bronx things.

Official Rules: Each expert selected one moment from each act, a process we invented called “voting,” but were given one emergency tie for mental safety regulations. They were all made aware of the gravity of this poll and how this would be the most important article ever written. We now present Acts 4-7.

The gang is still terrorizing Jackie all day, and in clear view of unlimited witnesses. They, all of them, show up on his way to the market and chase him through a parking lot. Despite being able to just walk through an unlimited number of these lame fucks, Jackie spends another full scene running from them. Well, except for the gang’s Indian, who Jackie singles out to pull off a motorcycle and obliterate with a 200-hit combo. Not sure if that’s anything, but it’s weird, right?

Brockway: Don’t make this out to be a race thing. You called him the gang’s Indian specifically because he is not Native American. He is a Chinese stuntman dressed like Steven Seagal dressed like an Indian. Jackie Chan introduced this problematic Halloween costume motherfucker to a Guilty Gear combo on basic principle. 

Seanbaby: Anyway, in Act-4 we have a tie for first place. With three votes comes the moment Jackie Chan wakes up from being beaten nearly to death by broken glass, nude on Danny’s couch. With fluttering eyebrows, Danny lets him know his sister got a real good look at him. A real good look.

Seanbaby: Also with three votes comes “Worst Fucking Snitch in All of The Bronx.” This bouncy ball salesman (?) sees a violent street gang in the middle of a manhunt shouting variations of, “I CAN’T FIND HIM ANYWHERE!” He gets into his truck to find a panicked gentleman with terror in his kind eyes and, within earshot of so many obvious murderers, loudly shouts…

Seanbaby: Our external consultants did not agree with us, but Brockway and I both voted for this touching moment where Danny interrupts his sister’s speech on how hard she works to support him with…

Brockway: Important note – just a few seconds later in this same scene, Nancy says she’ll get the new cushion tomorrow. Danny hits her with “‘Tomorrow tomorrow,’ always tomorrow!” This is a rarely seen debate technique called the Double Double. Danny, the relentless little savage, only serves it Animal Style. 

Seanbaby: Danny’s cushion is all he ever talks about and advances the plot at least 72 different times. It foreshadows and calls back. It establishes motivations and creates unique symbolic connections to five different characters. Filmmakers will study the cushion in Rumble in the Bronx for centuries; the pinnacle of elegance in screenwriting.

Honorable mention with zero votes: “Tony Says Hi to Jackie.”

This one was a free act. There’s only one choice for greatest line here and it’s the one where Jackie Chan silently jumps 700 feet through a window! What the fuck, Jackie!

Brockway: There’s no rope tied to him. No harness. In the outtakes, you can see it more clearly — there are absolutely no safety measures here. If Jackie Chan did not make this jump, the backup plan was “miss Jackie Chan with all your heart.” Somebody must have seen this fucking insane jump that he was proposing, and told Jackie Chan he couldn’t do this. I wonder how that person lives with themselves.

Seanbaby: This whole gang Jackie has been beating up and running from are nothing compared to the real villains: White Tiger and his henchmen! The police are as surprised as we are!

I and two others voted for the first place moment, “Howard Shrugs.” Howard is credited as “Police Officer” and does not have a line in this scene despite his partner talking to him for a minute straight. He spends his end of the conversation puffing his cigar, pretending to type, and finally ending it with a helpless SHRUG. He is a champion of scenery chewing. Howard manages to steal a scene in this movie, without saying a single word.

Brockway: I don’t understand. I don’t know how he does it. He gets like three lines in this entire movie and one of them is a shrug. He wears plain suspenders and a tasteful button-up, and he’s surrounded by characters dressed like they’re making fun of 1993. Characters that deliver their lines like anime villains — anime villains in the dub version — and spend every other scene backflipping into dumpsters after a Jackie Chan kick. The best stunt Howard does in this film is ‘laying down rather quickly one time.’ How does he steal scenes with competition like this??? I should not remember Howard. I do remember Howard!

Seanbaby: With two votes is the moment where Howard’s partner, “Police Officer” learns they have to release two suspects in a series of murders and robberies with ties to organized crime because their lawyer said so.

The next three lines each received one vote:

Act-6 Bronze Medalist #1: “Danny Sometimes Gets Mad At His Legs”

Act-6 Bronze Medalist #2: “Danny Sometimes is The Master of Shade”

Fun Fact: The set designers for Rumble in the Bronx decorated Danny’s building in graffiti to create an authentic subsidized housing feeling and here are actual phrases from that graffiti:

BIG DICK GONE BAD

MARTIN LUTHER KING

I’LL KILL U

POPEYE RULES

PAY OR DIE RAT FINK

COMMANDO RAIDS

LOVE YER TITS ROXANNE

TOMORROW IS TOO LATE

LINDA 555-2743

MALCOM X

LOS CABRONES

PUTA

TROY’S STASH <—–

JUANITA 555-2222

XO FUNKHOLE RAP

OLIVE OIL RULES

BILLY LIVES HERE

Brockway: Pretty savage burn on Wimpy by omission.

Seanbaby: Back to what we were talking about. Act-6 Bronze Medalist #3: “NYPD’s Best Interrogator Strikes Out.”

Seanbaby: In a legendary act of revenge, Jackie Chan starts dating the gang leader’s girlfriend, walks into his headquarters, insults him, and kicks his ass. Then he beats the fucking fuck out of everyone in his gang with their own leisure equipment. Their place is decorated like a Youtuber’s McMansion and he breaks every square inch of it over the Indian’s fringe jacket.

Brockway: Jackie Chan absolutely mauls every single member of this gang, so it’s such a superfluous power move to also start banging their leader’s girlfriend halfway through the movie. You can see in his eyes he’s not even slightly into her. This is pure psychological warfare. This is the mental version of knocking eight men’s teeth out with a paint can. 

Seanbaby: Fun-moment-wise, this was a very competitive act with Jackie Chan’s awkward kiss and the time he says to the gang, “YOU ARE ALL GARBAGE,” not even placing. Four moments tied for first place with two votes. The first one is a truly magical shot lingering on an ice cream salesman where nameless extras seem to be deliberately following a script, but one that seems impossible for anyone to have written down. There are 17 precisely executed lines about ice cream or thanking someone for ice cream from characters unrelated to the story in a scene that isn’t about ice cream. In a film this efficient, this artfully crafted, where every line is a Herculean struggle by a non-English speaker, it must mean something; but what!? Consider this while you read “Very Natural Ice Cream Small Talk.”

Also receiving two votes is “Tony Says Staaahhhp and It Doesn’t Work and Jackie Chan Keeps Beating the Chinese Gang Member’s Dick and Head With a Ski.”

Brockway: It should be noted that Tony tells his gang to STAAAHHHP after firing a gun into the air, and follows it up by insisting that everybody leave Jackie alone. Tony has a gun and a gang and Jackie Chan has one half of some used sports equipment and Tony is extremely concerned for the safety of his people.

Seanbaby: My vote was for this scene where a guy comes in with a garbage bag full of Lance, the gang’s barbarian White Tiger’s men put through a wood chipper. I love it not only for his once-in-a-generation combination of over and under acting, but because of what happens next. Everyone starts puking and screaming when they open the sloppy bag of human remains and Lisa runs to Jackie Chan, who is in the room watching all of this, to inform him, “Keung, a friend of mine was murdered.” This movie can take a garbage bag of liquid Lance and make it hilarious.

And the fourth first place winner is “Jackie Turns The Criminals’ Lives Around.”

Brockway: I’m the only one that voted for this, and that’s insane. Jackie bursts into a gang’s hideout and shows them all a whole new world that looks like this one only you’re upside down and deepthroating a pool cue, then he tells them they should drink tea together and they all — every single one of them — reconsider their criminal ways on the spot. They’re all best friends after this! This is the defining moment in all of cinema! I request these results be invalidated. I demand we adjourn while I motion for a formal inquiry into criminal Rumble tampering.