Kurt Russell does a reprise of the John Wayne accent that served him so well in Escape from New York, but looks faintly harassed, as well he might, as a philosophising trucker, played as a cross between a swaggering Wayne, adventurous Harrison Ford and wacky Bill Murray.

Virtually every Asian actor in Hollywood appears to have been signed up for this story of kidnap and Triad gangs, crossed with a black fantasy about a seven-foot tall Chinese magician controlling an evil empire deep beneath San Francisco's Chinatown district.

Carpenter has more success composing the music for the film, which is rousing stuff.

Easy entertainment, but disappointingly thin.