Review: Despite Jackie Chan’s name being pushed to the fore on this movie and it’s DVD, Jackie is just one of many characters, and he pops up a few times as little more than an extended cameo appearance. In fact, more screen time is given to a young Brigitte Lin, but it’s doubtful that either actor is proud of this movie. It would probably be accurate to say they were both young and needed the money.

Fantasy Mission Force is interesting as an example of how strange cinema can be, and historically, makes an interesting movie for fans of Chan or Lin to have in their collection. Ultimately, though, this is a garbled and confusing mess of a movie, which provides little entertainment, but plenty of source material for drunk males wishing to show off their skill at heckling a TV screen.

The setting is World War II, and the Japanese have stolen ‘some treasure’ and a number of POWs hostage. Having decided that James Bond and Rocky Balboa are unavailable (?!) they decide to send in a squad of oddball characters to sort things out. This means we have Briggit Lin as an Indiana Jones style mercenary, Jackie Chan as a Dungaree wearing wrestler, Jimmy Wang Yu as a military Captain, a ‘top break-away’ expert, a couple of military types, and the Scottish guard fighting against all manner of equally strange bad guys, who wear amazon outfits, tuxedos, and drive modern cars with swastikas on the side.

Following the war theme for a while is one thing, but then half way through the movie they decide to change direction altogether and stay in a haunted house, which in a perverse way fits with the rest of the film by making absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Fantasy Mission Force is an extremely odd movie that defies description. It is best to accept it as simply a bunch of stuff that happens in front of a camera, and try not to work out why or how. To do so could do terrible things to a man’s mind. Maybe that’s what happened to Mariah Carey when she went mental.