As my evening contract’s project is moving into abeyance, I had time for a double feature one night last week. So after watching Thin Ice, I popped in this recently acquired Jackie Chan film. I’d tell you what a great Jackie Chan fan I am, but I guess I’ve only watched a handful of his films since I started writing down my thoughts on them. I watched Shanghai Noon last November; Legend of the Drunken Master in January 2023; Jackie Chan’s First Strike! in November 2022; Shanghai Nights in March 2023 (I know, I saw this series backwards, but I also acquired them out-of-order); Kung Fu Yoga in May 2021; and Rush Hour in January 2021. However, I did watch several of them this century (Supercop? Operation Condor? Rumble in the Bronx for sure), and I did actually see several of them circa 1996 when one of the members of our D&D group screened a couple on VHS. So I’ve known who he was even before or as he was breaking big in the American market. Martial art movie hipster, moi? Maybe.
At any rate: In this film, Jackie Chan plays some sort of commando (named Jackie, which is why I like writing movie reports for his films–the actor and the character names are the same, so I don’t worry about where to cut over in the movie report) on a mission to kidnap/rescue some scientists. After the rescue succeeds, his cross-national (mercenary?) team is double-crossed, and only Jackie survives, although with amnesia. Some natives find him and help him recuperate, although they think his name is WhoAmI. When he is better, he visits the helicopter wreckage containing the bodies of his team members (people dressed like you, the natives told him). He spots a rally race in the distance and departs his native friends. He finds and helps a brother-and-sister driving team and leads them to victory in the race, amazing everyone–he is dressed in native garb, and the herbs he used to help with a snack bite have numbed his mouth so he cannot talk to humorous effect.
The race ends in J-berg, Seffrica, and he is spotted by a reporter who wants to interview him in depth. And by shady psuedo-military operatives and a CIA leader. They’re on his tail, and he works to recover his memory and to find out what the operatives want with the scientists and the material they are studying–a part of a meteorite with great destructive power. Action takes place in South Africa and then shifts to Rotterdam as presumably both locations kicked in funding for the privilege.
Wikipedia tells me this is the second film that Chan scripted and shot in English, and to be honest, early in it, I was wondering if it was dubbed–I guess the audio syncing is just off a bit, or I’m just a knob. The film has a lot of Jackie Chan humor in it, but it is only about halfway through that we get the trademark Chan comic fighting stunts.
Still, amusing. Probably in the middle of his work both temporally and quality wise.
Being the Internet was in its infancy at this time, we do not have any Christine vs. Yuki arguments in the Wayback machine, but we could.
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| Michelle Ferre played Christine, the reporter who turns out to be a good ally. | Mirai Yamamoto played Yuki, the rally driver who accompanies Jackie in Africa. |
Hard to say, but I favor Christine slightly.
“Rumble in the Bronx” was my introduction to Mr. Chan. It definitely gave credence to the idea that you can fix anything with duct tape, including a hovercraft.
Rumble in the Bronx is called Chan’s American breakthrough, so it’s probably most people’s first introduction to him. Maybe even Stever, the guy from the gaming group that screened the videocassettes for us. But it might not have been available on VHS then, so we got the others.
And welcome back.