Earlier this week, we learned the movie at the center of the Ryan Walters Nudiegate wasn’t a retro skin flick from the 1970s, but, most surprisingly, a forgotten Jackie Chan action film with lots of nudity from the 1980s – The Protector.
As an avid consumer of low-budget action movies that feature multiple full-frontal nude scenes, I’ve seen the film multiple times, and must admit, it seems like an odd thing to air during a school board meeting.
If Ryan was looking for more action-packed intrigue, Chan has better movies out there like Police Story, Armour of God, or Project A.
If Ryan wanted more nipples, pubic hair, and massage tables, I would have recommended Masseuse II, starring Ashlyn Gere, Asia Carrera, and the always nasty Leena.
But I don’t get to pick which movies Ryan shows to school board members in his office on a Thursday morning — I just review them, and here is my review of 1985’s The Protector.
A classic trope-filled tale, the movie is Chan’s low-budget entry into the Caucasian American movie market, and finds him playing the role of Billy Wong – a NYC cop who breaks all the rules and, at the beginning of the tale, loses his partner while trying to break up a bar robbery.
Billy eventually gets a new partner named Danny, played by the fresh-off-the-Papa Don’t Preach music video set Danny Aiello.
They end up going to Hong Kong to investigate the gangland kidnapping of a mob boss's daughter, and all the standard mid-80s action movie tropes ensue, from restaurant fight scenes to speedboat chases to spicy prostitutes turning into paid assassins who attack our heroes with shiny knives.
I’m not going to delve into any big plot-related spoilers, but honestly, The Protector is not a very good movie.
The story is very ho-hum, and while Chan’s action work is enjoyable, Aiello primarily just stands around, probably waiting for Spike Lee to make Do the Right Thing.
Jackie Chan completists might get a kick out of seeing him awkwardly wedged into an 80s American cop cliché, but for everyone else, The Protector is less a hidden gem and more a dusty VHS curiosity — the kind of film you stumble across on cable, watch for 15 minutes, and then forget about until it randomly turns up in the middle of a state board meeting.
Here’s hoping the next time Ryan Walters plays a movie in his office, the violence, plot and nudity are actually worth watching — and not something to get made about.
