This moving picture deals with Chan Foh To (Jackie Chan) who runs a small garage in Hong Kong along with his father and two sisters who are abducted and the only way Foh can get his sisters back is by racing cougar in Japan. Foh is an expert mechanic an in his spare time, he also helps the police out by checking vehicles that have been illegally upgraded. One night, heinous street racing driver named Warner Krugerman or Cougar (Nickel), speeds past Foh and the patrolmen . Foh gets into a car and stops Cougar heroically but later takes place the kidnapping his sisters by the psychotic nasty. In order to release his kidnapped sisters , sports car mechanic Jackie Chan has to beat a super-criminal street racer . He now must retrain himself in race car driving so he can be at his best to race Cougar .Exciting film plenty of thrills , over-the-top action with impressive and interminable fights including Chan dangling and downing, ingenious stunts and stirring music . This thrilling movie is packed with adventure , intrigue , unstopped action , overwhelming stunt-work and lots of fights but with humor . Jackie Chan is top notch as one army man fighting a group of heinous hoodlums and as always he makes his own stunts like is well showed at the final stock-shots . Awesome , incredible stunts and brief comic touches , as usual ; the picture is well constructed as well as Chan's ulterior films . The lighting-paced storyline slows down at times , but frantic action sequences make up for it . Spotlights of the movie hold several spectacular races , Jackie jumping down and fighting ; including when the nasty Cougar lands in jail, but breaks out eventually on some breathtaking scenes . Furthermore , when Cougar gets revenge on Foh by trashing his garage , a breathtaking final race and other extraordinary action sequences in overwhelming style . This is an acceptable action movie distinguished by nicely cinematography of the spectacular sequences , and contains agreeable sense of humor such as previous entries . Jackie Chan usually forms couple to notorious actress as Maggie Chung and Michelle Yeoh . However in this outing Jackie teams up again to Chinese actress , Anita Yeun , Miss Hong Kong 1990 . This is a passable action movie distinguished by ferocious sequences , and packs silly sense of humor as well as Jackie's subsequent entries . The motion picture is professionally directed by Gordon Chan who filmed various Jackie Chan and Jet Li vehicles and several art-martial movies such as ¨Fist the legend¨, ¨Kung Fu master¨, ¨The king of fighters¨and ¨The medallion¨The picture achieved success in China and around the world . However , Jackie Chan's failed at Box-office in his American debut ,¨Battle creek brawl¨ . Chan is a fine action star in their own right , he is a hard-working actor and director throughout his long and varied career . Chan usually pays overt homage to two of his greatest influences as Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd . He went on playing ¨Cannoball¨ , ¨The protector¨ and "Rumble in the Bronx", until getting all American success with ¨Shangai Knights¨ , ¨The tuxedo¨ , ¨Around the world in 80 days¨ and ¨Rush hour¨ trilogy , and the recent ¨Karate kid¨. Of course , his biggest hits were ¨The Police story¨ series that won the Golden Horse Award, a Chinese version of the Oscar , the first was titled ¨Police story(1985)¨ directed by the same Chan , it was a perfect action film for enthusiastic of the genre ; the following was ¨Police story 2(1988)¨also pretty violent and with abundant humor touches. It's followed by ¨Supercop¨ or ¨Police story 3¨ and finally, ¨Police story IV : Crime story . Rating : Acceptable and passable , the picture has its sensational moments here and there , but also with abundant humor touches mostly provided by its agile star , the super Jackie . It's a perfect action film for enthusiast of the genre though only for Jackie fans .

First off, I found the plot a bit problematic at times. Not atypical for a Chinese movie, no offense to the Chinese movie makers intended.As a race fan, the auto racing scene did not look realistic to me much of the time. I read that they drove at slower speeds and sped up the film, which is exactly what it looks like. They are going way too fast for sports cars in some scenes.Besides the excess speed, the cars are not smooth. Skilled race drivers are not driving all over the track - that would obviously cause you to lose time, and probably control :) Not a big deal maybe to a general audience, but people familiar with racing will notice it.Some of the fighting scenes were pretty good, as expected. I did not feel my time was wasted. I just wish they had done the racing in a more realistic way.

Version: Cantonese VCD, with English SubtitlesJackie Chan + yakuza + cars + evil white guys... 'Thunderbolt' should equal pure brilliance. It doesn't. Jackie Chan plays (according to the subtitles) Jackie Chan, a mechanic working with the police. Jackie gets on the bad side of the obligatory-evil-white-guy: In this case, he is Cougar, a race-driver and all-round evil dude. Cougar kills a bunch of policemen, and kidnaps Jackie's sisters, threatening to kill them if Jackie doesn't race him.'Thunderbolt' is more serious, and darker than a lot of Jackie's movies. Unfortunately, a lot of Jackie's movies are better than 'Thunderbolt', even the other serious ones. Cougar tends to shout a fair bit - he is played by Thorsten Nickel, and I'd be lying if I said he was the most talented actor ever. I'd even be lying if I called him an actor. At least his acting ability provides some much needed comedic relief. On the other hand, the action scenes range from awesome to boring. The fights are generally pretty good, even though there is some obvious doubling and wirework. The final scene, however, is boring, and the speed-up obvious.6/10.

"Thunderbolt" is probably Jackie Chan's worst movie since "The Protector" in 1985. Yes, I know that nobody watches his movies for their stories, but the plotting of this one is unusually lame, even by his standards, and while the fight choreography IS up to his standards, the fight scenes (the whole two of them) are ruined, as others have mentioned, by the frenetic, distracting camerawork. Even the most serious Jackie Chan fans shouldn't really bother with this offensively haphazard, stunt-and-plug-filled garbage. Anita Yuen's cute and perky performance is one of the few redeeming virtues. For a good "serious Jackie" movie, I recommend "Crime Story". (*1/2)