Well Go USA Entertainment

Happy Birthday, Hunny! Yep, this movie review coincides approximately with my wife’s 39th birthday and references tigers, her favorite carnivore and house pet.

The movie itself is rather thin on the tiger side, but chock full of kick railroad scenes pretty much throughout this picture. I had a heck of a time finding out about the locomotives used. After much googling, I came across this vague quote from Wiki: “The film had railway sequences shot in Diaobingshan using steam trains.”

Diaobingshan was the key. I soon discovered the nearby Tiefa Steam Locomotive Museum which has a whole fleet of similar looking locomotives. <– This last link is an absolutely outstanding look at operations from over 20 years ago (Many thanks to David Longman).

One more lick of trivia before we start reviewing. Check out the above back cover from my DVD. How did a U.S. built (Baldwin 1925), narrow gauge, Durango & Silverton K-36 class 2-8-2 #486, make it all the way to Diaobingshan? Slow boat to China? Nope. Cut & paste, and maybe they won’t notice. How about Flying Tigers?

Ding Hao!!

Here’s a REAL railroad tiger, posing with my glass-marbled crossbuck. Mister Tiger is the aforementioned house pet who spends most of his time napping on the living room couch (Lazy ass tiger…).

SY class 2-8-2 #9708 rounds a curve with an eclectic mix of rolling stock. I believe filmmakers were using 2 locomotives and just changing their numbers for different scenes or trains.

“Lao-hu!” As the opening credits begin, we see school children visiting the China Railway Museum in Beijing. At first, I thought they were using that headlight-over-headlight steamer (right side) in the movie, until I realized the headlights are positioned differently.

A little boy has wandered away from his classmates and climbed up in a steam engine cab. Fascinated, he looks around at all the hardware. On the firebox doors, he notices this chalked image of a tiger. The character on the tiger’s head means, “King”, “Royal”, or “Monarch”.

Let me set the stage. It’s December 1941. Japan has invaded China. Railway worker Ma Yuan (played by Jackie Chan) and his rag-tag band of guerrillas are fighting back along a rail line from Nanjing to Tianjin. Having said all this, I’m going to be concentrating on train scenes and maybe a couple of the villains — some of whom are wonderfully over the top! Here we go…

Two trains in shot. How about that crazy yellow & red-painted locomotive? And a SIDECAR! Oh boy, you know what happens to sidecars in movies…

SY class 2-8-2 #3027 leads its train out of the station; interior of one of the coaches; It’s Jackie!

A couple rods-down closeups of the #3027.

Coming and going views of the 3027’s train.

Decent CGI views of 3027 and train arriving at the station.

SY #1727 bursts out of a tunnel, then comes face-to-face with this curious contraption. It appears to be some sort of 4 wheel armored car on rails towing a laundry hamper full of Japanese soldiers.

SY #9708 coming and going shots with its mixed train (freight and passenger). Just to spice things up, a whole squadron of sidecars is in pursuit!

P1: Kawasaki lets the good times roll!!; P2: He flies through the air with the greatest of ease; P3: One cycle lands on the roof to battle Jackie; P4: Banzai!!

Begin Interlude!

Yamaguchi! (played by Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) is NOT pleased upon finding the Railroad Tigers symbol on his beat. Throughout this picture, he made the most wonderful, sneering, evil faces as he battled the Tigers del Railroad. Look out, Jackie!!

Girls, girls, girls. ROWF!! BAD GIRL is attacking the RR Tiger engineer whilst GOOD GIRL is held at knifepoint. AUNTIE GIRL fixes Jackie and the boys a little snack.

End Interlude!

Two vistas of SY #8027 and short train.

Nicely lit night view of the station as a train pulls in.

Roll out the SY #3076! How about that crazy paint job and “daisy” ornamentation up front? By the way, the sign character translates to “Woo” – a Chinese RR whistle post!

Close up of that armored car with the spikey things up front; chasing the train on a curve.

Picture 1: Stop, or I’ll shoot!; Picture 2: Now THIS is a farked up situation.

The ending was so unbelievable and so poorly done in CGI, I’m not even going to try and describe it.

The filmmakers must have thought so too. They included a crudely-animated sequence showing how the movie would play out, BEFORE the ending! (They gave away their own ending). So, fair readers, I’m just gonna end this review here and now. Hope y’all had fun! I did. ;p

Here’s what IMDb has to say about Railroad Tigers:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4687848/

If you have ANY information about this movie you’d like to share, please contact me at: Lindsay.Korst@gmail.com, or leave a comment.  Thanks and enjoy the blog!

THE END