After recently watching Fantasy Mission Force, I rediscovered this film. And in (fruitlessly) trying to find out when I bought it by searching the blog for its purchase at a book sale or antique mall, I discovered I have a lot of Jackie Chan films floating around.
This one is…. Well, it’s not young Jackie Chan. In it, he plays a part of a burglary trio where Landlord plots the heists and drives the getaway car and he (Jackie Chan’s Thong) and another guy (Octopus) are the inside guys. Thong and Octopus waste their share of the loot, but Landlord stashes his in his home. But after he’s burglarized himself and his millions are gone, he takes a job he normally would not: Kidnapping a baby for a triad boss who thinks that the baby is his grandson. It ties back to a hospital heist at the beginning when the baby was being born while the crew were stealing drugs, and they lost it when saving the baby from an initial kidnapping attempt. When they kidnap the child, they have to take care of it whilst Landlord sets things up, and it makes them realize they’re missing something–Thong is estranged from his father because of his profession, and Octopus has left a wife in the hinterlands for his girl-chasing life in the city, and when she shows up in a chicken costume to announce she’s pregnant, he sends her away–but he comes to realize he’s missing that deep meaning of being a father. So–the middle part is them learning to handle a baby and whatnot, a bit of humor. The last part of the film is the delivery of the child to the crime lord who thought it was his grandson and the aftermath of learning the baby was not–which involved a bunch of kung fu fighting, some gun play, and a resolution where all parties were reconciled after a while.
So: Okay, maybe it has a bit of the Chinese sensibility, but the film does not make westerners out as the bad guys, so perhaps it was targeted for internal audiences more than international distribution. Or maybe my assertion that Chinese films of the 21st century favor Westerners as bad guys, especially when dealing with a larger scale plots always cast Americans or the West as antagonists and play up national unity against the outsiders, is incorrect.
The film fits in with what you expect from a Jackie Chan film, especially the Hong Kong work of the 1980s (Supercop, Police Story, Armor of God, etc.). All right, all right, purists: Police Story 3: Supercop which led to Supercop 2 which was not Police Story 4: Supercop 2. My point is these were set in the present day, not the past, like some of his earlier work.
Which reminds me: My collection of Jackie Chan films floating around don’t necessarily include the peak Jackie Chan. I’ve got Rumble in the Bronx. I’ve got the Armour of God films. I think I’m lacking in the Police Story line. I have a boxed set that I watched before reporting on movies (also Rumble in the Bronx). So I’d have to order them, as Stever did when he made the D&D group watch some videocassettes in 1994 which introduced me to Jackie Chan. Well, maybe, someday. When I’ve cleared some of the films, and Jackie Chan, films which are stacked still atop my to-watch cabinet.
But enough about that. You wanted to learn more about Charlene Choi, ainna?
Charlene Choi plays the pregnant wife of Octopus who appears early in the film in a chicken costume.
It looks like all of her work has been overseas, so that’s two reasons why I’ve not seen her elsewhere before.
