by Meyers, Ric
In Hong Kong film, it was customary that when someone gets hurt, even breaks a limb, they just go get it set, administer some Chinese herbs, and return to the set (as Liu Chia-liang did after breaking his leg directing Cat vs. Rat). But this wound put Jackie in the hospital for weeks. After hours of operating to remove skull fragments from his brain, the doctors were amazed how quickly Jackie recovered. Chan was left with a coin-sized hole in his skull, covered in plastic, which vibrates when he hums. He was also left with a firm conviction that Armour of God must be finished.
Many film industry leeches and weasels were waiting for him to fail, but he would not give them the satisfaction. Besides, Golden Harvest had a lot of money invested in the production, and Chan’s work ethic would not let them down. After recollecting the cast (Alan Tam, Rosamund Kwan) many months later (resulting in an obvious on-screen change of hairstyle [some thought Jackie’s original “unlucky” hairdo was the supernatural cause of his accident]), Chan restarted the production with himself at the helm and a lot to prove — namely that he still “had it.”
He did, but, understandably, Armour of God is one of his most makeshift efforts. The plot hinged on the prophecy that if the title weapons — five pieces of medieval armament — fall into evil hands or are destroyed, the world would be plunged into ruin. Well, the armor does get stolen by a money and sex-loving cult, and are destroyed in the finale, but no ruin is forthcoming. Like a good magician, Jackie distracted the audience from that slip with extremely impressive stunts and action set pieces.
While recuperating, Chan had plenty of time to consider the state of kung fu film choreography — especially that traditional Bruce bug-a-boo that saw him being attacked by a circling mob … one at a time. So Jackie designed, developed, and put into action a circular form of kung fu defense that allowed him to take on multiple attackers at the same time by constantly turning, even spinning. He had already played with the multiple attacker situation in Project A and Police Story, but usually by being more beat up and/or moving faster. In Armour of God, he got the better of his assailants by always knowing where they were, and putting his attack in effect even while whirling.
Originally Cynthia Rothrock was supposed to be the Armour’s ultimate fighting guard, but after Jackie’s injury, scheduling conflicts precluded her participation. She was replaced by four African actresses in black leather and painful high heels. They were doubled by mortifyingly-disguised Jackie stunt team members, but this final fight, before the literally explosive finale, was still exceedingly entertaining. Ironically, because the audience wondered how Jackie would bounce back from such an injury, Armour of God became his most financially successful movie ever.
Still, it is safe, and sad, to say that Jackie was never the same. Although he had suffered many a broken bone even before Armour, this closer brush with mortality made him twice shy. Much as the direction of the James Bond series veered into farce as a result of Sean Connery’s retirement, and George Lazenby’s foolish resignation, Chan’s injury caused him to reexamine his future — to the detriment of his films. Rather than continue to break new ground, Chan embarked on a series of sequels and “culmination” productions. It seemed as if the kung fu film clown prince wanted to get in as much sure-fire action as he still could.
Project A II (1987), the follow-up to Pirate Patrol, didn’t lack ambition. It was Jackie’s most obvious homage to Buster Keaton, and his last great attempt at a sophisticated story. Playing the same intrepid Coast Guard/police officer as he had in the original, Jackie is seconded to a corrupt police troop in a small city, where he must fight his own bribe-taking comrades as well as crime bosses, revolutionaries, sadistic mainland Chinese agents, and even the ax-wielding remnants of the pirates he defeated in the prequel.
Jackie took the opportunity to streamline and perfect the French-farce touches he had attempted in previous films, as well as mount a series of comic confrontations that take place in an exotic nightclub, a soy-milk factory, a fish hatchery, a chicken-plucking establishment, and, finally, throughout an entire town he had specially built on the back lot of the Shaw Brothers Studio. His accident also seemed to effect his approach to the fight scenes. When, before, he would clearly defeat his adversary, in Project A II, he went to obvious lengths to just dump them, or have them chased, off screen. It was as if, having experienced the pain of nearly dying, he couldn’t bear to do it to his beloved creations.
He didn’t seem to mind still doing it to himself, however. One of the climax’s most memorable moments is when he stuffs his mouth full of hot peppers so he could spit the chewed mulch on his hands to blind his opponents with it. “They were real,” Jackie told me. “I, for one, will never forget that scene, that’s for sure.” Nor will his fans, many of whom declare Project A II Jackie’s finest directorial effort.
Next came Police Story 2 (1988), which continued the traditions of villain-dumping established on the prior production, while adding a new wrinkle. This sequel was really two one-hour films: the first being a continuation of the original (where a dying Chu Yuan attempts to make the hero’s life miserable), and the second seeing Jackie take on a team of, literally and figuratively, explosive extortionists. Although not as cohesive as his previous films, the stunt team was at the height of its powers, mounting one amazing fight scene after another — fight scenes of such complexity and speed that they needed to be reviewed repeatedly to capture all the nuances.
The now de rigueur end credit outtakes give witness to the price: both Jackie and co-star Maggie Cheung received head wounds during the production (thankfully neither as dire as Armour of God’s accident). Chan’s old friend Sammo Hung’s professional situation was far more dire. At the same time Jackie was flying high, Hung’s filmography had hit a rough patch. In addition to decreasing box office returns for his work, Sammo had gone public with his contention that his films wouldn’t have failed if Jackie had agreed to appear in them. While that may have been true, as far as it goes, it didn’t exactly endear him to his Peking Opera School junior.
Even so, Jackie was now in his mid-thirties, and his internal alarm clock was ticking louder every day. The idea of a final “Three Brothers” film — one that would immortalize their kung fu skills at their optimum, was not anathema to him. So deciding, they shot the works with Dragons Forever (1988), a literally fight-filled extravaganza featuring almost every kung fu supporting player they could cram in (including Dick Tei Wei, Philip Kao Fei, Billy Chow, Yuen Wah, Chin Kar-lok, Fung Hak-on, Liu Chia-yung, and much of both Jackie’s and Sammo’s stunt teams).
Curiously, each of the stars played anti-heroes (Jackie an amoral lawyer, Sammo a gun runner, and Yuen Baio a benignly demented burglar) — two of whom are redeemed by true love with sisters who are being persecuted by an eccentric, sadistic drug lord. As the three struggle through the plot, the fights are fast, ample, and amazing. The trio fight each other and literally dozens of thugs in restaurants, nightclubs, parking lots, pleasure boats, and, finally, in a drug factory where each does some of his most impressive work.
There Sammo stages a rematch between Jackie and Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, the villain’s main cocaine taster. “This one took a little longer,” Urquidez explained to me. “We worked for weeks on this fight, and, yes, they [i.e. the action director, choreographer, and stuntmen] do pretty much make it up as they go along.” The humor in this fight is more facile than in Wheels on Meals, and the brutality lessened, but they still get their kicks in, although, for the first time ever, Jackie is clearly doubled by a stuntman (most likely Chin Kar-lok) for the fight’s penultimate kick.
“Jackie was on another set,” an insider who did not wish to be identified maintained. “Sammo works so fast that Jackie didn’t have time to be both places at once ... and we needed that shot.” It would not be the last time Sammo used stand-ins for Jackie in the midst of his frenetic fight sequences. But, despite an interesting story and many terrific fight scenes, it appeared as if the audience had not forgiven Sammo, o
r perhaps was a bit jaded by the trio.
For whatever reason, Dragons Forever had a surprisingly soft box-office take — even in Japan, which had traditionally been a Chan stronghold.
That, among other things, convinced Jackie to go his own way. “I’ve done everything three times,” he told me. So he decided to stop trying to honor Buster Keaton, Bruce Lee and Gene Kelly, and start trying to honor his latest screen idol: Steven Spielberg. So, for the next year, Chan slaved on what was originally titled Miracle, but eventually became Mr. Canton and Lady Rose (1989). It was his combination of Project A, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), and, most especially, Pocketful of Miracles (1961).
It was also Jackie’s favorite directing job, featuring his most complex camera work, elaborate musical montages, and highlighted by a sweeping crane shot that took seventeen hours to set up (and had to be done twice). Even so, this particular amalgam of a thirties’ gangster movie, a romantic musical comedy, and a kung fu flick leaps from genre to genre over its two-hour running time — and not always elegantly. Wedged between more French-farce sequences and classic Cantonese comedy scenes were four brilliantly conceived fights, climaxed by one of Chan’s finest.
Having completed the rest of the filming, Chan and his stuntmen, now numbering seventeen, started to plan the finale. They set the crew to work building the interior of a rope factory from the ground up, and designed an intricate series of amusing and amazing battles amongst the many floor levels, stairs, elevators, and gigantic spools of hemp. The resulting choreography of flying bodies, wrapping cord, and rolling barrels is awesome. Some say, however, that it was too much, too late. The fights were only punctuation for long patches of somewhat desperate comedy. Although more impressive each time it is watched, Miracle was not enough of a miracle, so all involved looked across the globe to the single biggest box office in the world.
“No American movie theater will play a movie with an all-Chinese cast,” Golden Harvest producer David Chan was told. “But what about Bruce Lee?” was his inevitable reply. “Oh,” came the equally inevitable answer. “He was the exception.” So the seemingly unexceptional Jackie Chan, at least in American eyes, set about to create his most spectacular film: a world-hopping challenge to his skills as a director, producer, and star, featuring only two Asian actors in a large cast of Caucasians. This was Armour of God II: Operation Condor (1991). Taking an idea from famed Italian actor Aldo Sambrell (seen in every Clint Eastwood “Man With No Name” spaghetti Western) about Nazi gold buried beneath the Sahara, they developed an exciting script to be filmed on location.
But as soon as they left the comforts of Hong Kong, everything went wrong. “I think Operation Condor was Jackie’s Apocalypse Now,” said Vincent Lyn, the actor, model, composer, teacher, and kick-boxing champion who played Mark, the scarred villain. “Sets were being blown away and burned down. Equipment and film were actually melting in the Sahara heat. His entire crew was getting sick, and not just with the flu. The assistant director (seen in the opening sequence being supported by two native women) had a stroke. Jackie’s production manager was arrested and kept in jail for months because extras were using the fake prop money in town.”
Even Lyn’s participation was as a result of a problem. He was brought in because one of the other Western actors accidentally kicked Jackie in the throat (the moment captured in the movie’s end-credit outtakes). Originally, this actor and his on-screen partner were to fight Jackie in the film’s “Nazi wind-tunnel” climax, but were replaced by Vincent and Jackie’s long-time friend, bodyguard, and trainer Ken Lo after the accident.
“Even though I had been in eighteen Hong Kong kung fu movies, Jackie and his crew made me feel like I had two left feet,” Lyn confessed. “They really were incredible, but Jackie had way too much to do. Even though they had moved the production back to Hong Kong by this time (bringing tons of Sahara sand with them for authenticity), Jackie was directing, starring, choreographing, producing, and rewriting as he went along.”
Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years as Jackie struggled to finish Operation Condor. By the end of production, the characters had become unreasoning ciphers, and the three female co-stars — a Chinese (Do Do Cheng), a Japanese (Shoko Ikeda), and a white girl (Eva Cobo de Garcia) chosen to “please” the three movie markets Chan hoped to top — seemed to be sharing the same handicapped brain. Just about the only thing that was truly effective was that Chan used the film to display a compendium of ways to imaginatively disarm gun-toting opponents.
Needless to say, the final result failed to supply Jackie with the breakthrough he was hoping for. Instead it nearly broke him. After that nightmare, Chan was probably at his lowest point, physically and mentally. So, naturally, the wolves who then ran in the Hong Kong film business moved in. That’s how Island of Fire (1991) — Jackie’s weakest feature since the Lo Wei days — came about. Done as a favor to powerful mob “producers,” and cobbled together by Jimmy Wang Yu from pieces of The Wild Geese (1978), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and The Longest Yard (1974), the Philippine sci-fi prison break adventure (also featuring the kowtowing Sammo Hung and Andy Lau) had some decent fights, but was best forgotten by all involved.
Upon his return to Hong Kong, Jackie was at a loss. To save Chan’s sanity, Golden Harvest hired stunt coordinator Stanley Tong to direct Police Story 3: Supercop (1992). Until this film, the women in Jackie movies were set decoration (or, as they called it in Asian cinema, “jade vases”) at best. Although the marvelous Maggie Cheung was still playing Jackie’s long-suffering girlfriend in this installment, she was always portrayed as having something short of a full intellectual deck. Reportedly, it was Tong’s idea to hire the magnificent Michelle Yeoh to play Jackie’s mainland equal, and she matches him kick for kick and stunt for stunt (so much so that Jackie reportedly kept upping the danger of his own stunts to keep pace with her). The film also has the distinction of being the very first Hong Kong film ever to be shot with live synchronized sound.
Supercop reinvigorated Jackie enough to float the idea of a straight-forward love story, but first he was pressed into service on a film created to benefit the Hong Kong Director’s Guild (so they could build, buy, or rent a headquarters). Co-directed by Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam, Twin Dragons (1992) featured dozens of directors in bit parts (including Liu Chia-liang and Johnny Wang Lung-wei) and starred Jackie in the dual role of twins separated at birth. One grew up to be a tough, hard-living Hong Kong car mechanic who’s in with the local mob, while the other became an orchestra leader in America. When the latter returns to Hong Kong for a concert, he finds that the two share nerves and reflexes, ala Alexander Dumas’ classic novel The Corsican Brothers. A merry mix-up of identities ensues, often placing the two Jackies on-screen together. It was Chan’s first foray into the world of special photographic effects, and was less than inspiring for him.
“In special effects, you can do anything, and the audience knows it,” Jackie mused. “Where’s the excitement in that?” Even so, it opened a door for Jackie, who entertained himself experimenting with how much he could mix kung fu with sfx (special effects). He dabbled a bit with it in his next film, which was also designed to put him back into the Japanese audience’s good graces. City Hunter (1993) was the Hong Kong version of a popular Japanese comic book (manga) character, directed by schlockmeister supreme Wong Jing. As silly as most of Jing’s work, it still boasts two classic sequences: one where Jackie takes lessons from an on-screen Bruce Lee in a movie theater fight scene, and another where, in a fantasy/dream sequence, Chan becomes several characters from the Street Fighter arcade videogame — including a dead-on impersonation of the female fighter Chun Li!
Coming off that giddily entertaining “anything goes” lampoon, Jackie wanted to sink his teeth into something a little more substantial. He found it in Crime Story (1993), which was supposed to be new wave director Kirk Wong’s first film in a projected modern crime trilogy starring real-lif
e wushu champion Jet Li. However, after Jet’s manager was murdered in an underworld battle for control of the Hong Kong film industry, Li went to mainland China for awhile, and Jackie decided to take the role. After a much publicized tug-of-wills between the director and star, the movie became Chan’s manifesto.
Although the script started as the tale of a conflicted cop trying to settle his psyche with the help of a sexy female psychiatrist while searching for a kidnapped millionaire, there’s a telling moment early on. Jackie has tried desperately to prevent the businessman’s abduction when a motorcycle cop is hurt in the ensuing chase. Jackie carries him to the emergency room, where his gorgeous shrink waits. He takes one look at her sympathetic, caring, beautiful face … then purposefully steps around her to share his frustration with the hospital wall. He might as well have picked her up and tossed her off-screen, because from that moment on, Crime Story is for, by, and about Jackie Chan.
In fact, the climatic scenes might serve as autobiographical sequences. As the bad guy lies under rubble in an exploding apartment block, he tells Jackie that everyone thinks he’s crazy, that he tries too hard, and that he never gives up. Jackie replies that he can’t help it, and continues to manically save the dying villain as well as an innocent child trapped by the blaze. Aside from a confusing finale in which the kidnap victim is seemingly drowned, only to turn up fine in the next scene, Crime Story is as psychologically revealing as any Woody Allen film.
It certainly seemed to free Jackie up enough to make a long awaited return to his roots. Sixteen years after making his first Huang Fei-hong film, Jackie hired none other than Liu Chia-liang to direct Drunken Master II (aka Legend of Drunken Master, 1994). Remarkably, the then-forty year old Jackie is credible playing the mischievous “twenty-something” Huang, despite the fact that the majestic Ti Lung, only seven years older than Chan, is playing his father. The plot was a recognizable retread of Jackie’s trademark “evil gang selling Chinese antiquities,” but it didn’t matter. The combination of Jackie’s Spielbergian ideas with Liang’s classic traditions made for a monumental achievement, which many consider Chan’s best film.