Breathing Fire is not a great movie, but it sure is fun to watch. Especially if you were eight years old watching it first like I was. But I discovered it rather randomly one time recently on the internet and decided to watch it again. It's still fun. It has both intentional and unintentional laughs, and it still works both as entertainment and as a story.
This little "karate" movie from 1991 found some new potential for exposure when it was added to Tubi's repository of entertainment media recently, and having acclaimed actor Ke Huy Quan, who plays Charlie in the film, recently win an Oscar (for Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023) also brings some new relevance to the movie as one of his early roles--we should all at least know and love Quan from The Goonies anyway.
There's nothing too deep about Breathing Fire or too special, except it kinda was awesome for a bony eight year old to witness the little Ke Huy Quan kicking Kung-fu movie legend Bolo Yeung out of commission. Which reminds me, now that Quan has won the Oscar his image should be the one up front and centre on its title page on Tubi as well as here, not the mostly forgotten Bolo Yeung who's there now. After all, Quan is by far the best actor in this move, and had the funniest moments too, and yes intentionally. At least there's a DVD cover or two with Quan.
One weird thing I always wondered about with this movie is why Charlie's Dad named him Charlie? Charlie's father is a Vietnam war vet, where a popular slang for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was "Charlie". It must have been obvious to the writer and other members of the creative team on this film that this was so. Therefore it must have been intentional to name the character that. It's rather obvious symbolism since the father is the movie's chief antagonist who's a murderer, a thief, and even almost killed Charlie in the showdown fight between them near the end. So in other words, he actually hates his kid named Charlie, and sees him as no more hard to kill than the NVA he was killing in Vietnam, whom he also called Charlie. The funny thing is, to overanalyse a bit, how would that be taken at first back when he was a baby and his Dad decided to name him Charlie? I mean up until Charlie was 18 or so he was at least pretending he loved him and was raising him his whole life. Wouldn't people around him find it a little bizarre and somewhat disturbing that he's going to name is his adopted son from Vietnam the same name the soldiers were giving the enemy they were killing??
Then again I don't think the movie demands you consider this too hard. I don't think any more complicated character development is needed for this movie. It's not some character study after all. It was always just supposed to be a fun film, probably geared more towards kids because (unlike many other similar movies that came before and after it) there' s not a lot of blood and no gore, very little bad language, no nudity or sex. If you're looking for a classic kung-fu karate kicking type of movie to introduce your kids to, this would be perfect.
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