Meltdown - C+
By Kage Alan

There's a definite problem with the majority of the Hong Kong films that have been released on DVD in North America during the past couple of years; the dubbing is hysterically awful! Aside from that, "Meltdown" suffers from one other little minor problem; it's billed as a Jet Li movie when in fact Jet is merely a secondary character. The film opens at a schoolyard where children are playing outside. A bus drives up and several heavily armed men and their leader, the Doctor, rush out, gather up the kids along with their teacher and put them all on the bus. The military is brought in since the bus has a bomb set to go off underneath it and it's up to Kit Le (Jet Li) to disarm it. Unfortunately, the Doctor outsmarts them and the bomb goes off killing everyone inside of it, including Kit's wife (the teacher). Flash forward two years later and Kit is now working as a stunt double/bodyguard for martial arts action movie star Frankie Lone. Unfortunately, the Doctor is back and out to steal the crown jewels of Russia at a brand new hotel. Among the guests invited to attend a party there is Frankie, so all eyes turn to him when the terrorists show up and take everybody hostage in the penthouse. Instead of taking the bad guys on, he runs and hides, which leaves matters up to Kit to inform the police as to what's going on and get help. Suffice to say that even though Jet Li isn't in it as much as one might like, he does do some terrific work here and earned his paycheck. While I also might say that the script was a tad weak, it might be due to whoever translated it and then there's that incredibly poor dubbing job. Ugh!