For people who've discovered Jackie Chan through his American hit Rush Hour and want to learn what his Hong Kong movies are like, Project A is an excellent place to start. Chan plays a sailor in 19th-century Hong Kong; pirates have been terrorizing the seas for months, and all efforts to combat them have been sabotaged by the corrupt chief of police and a criminal gang, who are in cahoots with the pirates. But the plot is hardly the point--a Jackie Chan movie is about astonishingly acrobatic action sequences and breathtaking stunts, and Project A has plenty. Of particular interest is a bicycle chase that is more suspenseful than any car chase you've ever seen. Chan is joined by Sammo Hung (star of TV's Martial Law) as a shifty con man who comes through when the chips are down. Project A... Less

The Young Master (1980) marks the first film Jackie Chan starred in (and also directed) for Golden Harvest, the film company that made Chan classics like Drunken Master II and Police Story III (a.k.a. Supercop). Chan plays Dragon, a student whose martial arts school is in competition against a more affluent rival school. The two groups face off in an annual lion dance competition in which Chan finds himself up against his own schoolmate Tiger, who is secretly being paid to perform for the rival school. When Tiger is found out and ejected from the group, Dragon goes after him. Tiger gets deeper into trouble, taking part in a robbery and jailbreak of the rival school's crooked headmaster, Kam. Through a series of mixups, Dragon is mistaken for Tiger and he has to clear his name in a... Less

A truly international production, Wheels on Meals teams up Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao in a comedic-action-cri me caper that includes what some consider one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed. Directed by Hung, the movie takes place in Spain, marking the first Jackie Chan vehicle set in a non-Asian location. Chan and Biao play two lunch-truck restaurateurs who are trying to make a living selling egg rolls and hamburgers in the busy squares of Barcelona. Hung is a novice private investigator searching for a beautiful pickpocket named Sylvia (Lola Ferner) whose thieving teams her up with Chan and Yuen. Sylvia is kidnapped after she discovers she is actually a wealthy heiress, and that's when Chan, Yuen, and Hung join forces to free her and kick some bad guys' butts. Wheels... Less

Jackie Chan finally conquered America with Rumble in the Bronx. If the mildly contorted English dialogue sounds peculiarly foreign and disembodied (most of it is dubbed), and the mountains of Vancouver, BC don't convincingly double for the skyline of New York City, well, peculiarities like these actually contribute something to the movie's ingenuous charm. With his disarming smile and feline physicality, the compact Chan radiates star quality. But there's more to him than charisma: at his best, the actor combines the relentlessly escalating, hyperkinetic action set-pieces for which Hong Kong is famous; the rigorous martial arts training of his idol, Bruce Lee; and the grace and daring that distinguish Buster Keaton's physical comedy. Chan also shares some of Keaton's cinematic integrity,... Less

Jackie Chan resurrects the old Corsican Brothers chestnut of identical twin brothers separated at birth who meet up as adults and discover that they share more than blood ties. Poor boy Chan is a mechanic and race-car driver whose black-market activities have made him the target of some nasty mobsters, while jet-setting Chan is a world-famous conductor back in Hong Kong for a concert. In the same vicinity for the first time in years, they can suddenly feel each other's pain, and more. As one Chan jumps a jet boat for a wild escape, the other becomes a spastic victim of the furious ride, thrown around a posh restaurant while drenching his date with drinking water. Though the American cut has been pared of the worst of Chan's incessant mugging (it's about 12 minutes shorter than the... Less

The Young Master (1980) marks the first film Jackie Chan starred in (and also directed) for Golden Harvest, the film company that made Chan classics like Drunken Master II and Police Story III (a.k.a. Supercop). Chan plays Dragon, a student whose martial arts school is in competition against a more affluent rival school. The two groups face off in an annual lion dance competition in which Chan finds himself up against his own schoolmate Tiger, who is secretly being paid to perform for the rival school. When Tiger is found out and ejected from the group, Dragon goes after him. Tiger gets deeper into trouble, taking part in a robbery and jailbreak of the rival school's crooked headmaster, Kam. Through a series of mixups, Dragon is mistaken for Tiger and he has to clear his name in a... Less

This is what The Mod Squad wanted to be. Chan (Eric Tsang), a cop on the fringe of the force, assembles a team of loose-cannon cadets--the Gen-X Cops--to infiltrate the mobs of Hong Kong, and they find a stolen shipment of explosive rocket fuel. Dressed in skin-tight leather and vinyl, hip to the point of being ridiculous, our heroes (named Jack, Alien, and Match) have to fight not only ultraviolent criminals but also hostile factions within the police as they track down a supercool Japanese gangster with no fear of death. The clichés fly fast and thick, and the plot is at times incomprehensible, but the action is pretty much nonstop. A shootout in a surfboard factory is particularly spectacular but is only one of several rapidly edited, stunt-filled sequences. The dubbing is better than... Less

The most readily available version of this early Jackie Chan flick has been distractingly dubbed with English accents and lad slang. ("You twit!" snarls a beefy young kung fu master.) This is a film of some historic interest, however, since Chan was directing himself for the first time, going way too far in his attempt to inject humor into the genre and distance himself from the grim, ferocious example of Bruce Lee. He has only himself to blame, in other words, for the over-the-top slapstick of the martial arts training sequences--like the one that has him standing on his head, balancing a bowl of scalding hot tea in his crotch. The action scenes are all-out gag-fests in which Chan does more mugging than fighting, appearing in drag in one memorable sequence. One hapless thug even gets... Less

When martial arts wizard Jackie Chan is in top form, no movie star on earth is more fun to watch. Armour of God never achieves the beautiful, smooth flow of continuous movement that distinguishes Project A--Part 2. In fact, it feels like a botched international coproduction, short on common sense and plot momentum, long on Eastern European scenery and huggermugger intrigue. The wispy premise is the first danger sign: all the segments of an ancient suit of armor have to be located and reassembled, so that the suit can be used to pay the ransom on a kidnapped girl--Jackie's old flame. (He competes for her affections with a chum played by heartthrob pop star Alan Tam.) The creepy Aryan bad guys are hiding out in a mountain retreat in Yugoslavia, which is stormed with gusto. A long second-act... Less

An enjoyable sequel to the 1984 gag-fest Winners and Sinners. Jackie Chan and an assortment of his pals (martial artists and comedians) make like the Rat Pack in this knockabout kung fu romp filmed in Japan in 1985. Undercover cop Chan, with partner Yuen Biao, has been stranded in Nippon, and Sammo Hung's gang of slapstick cutthroats, the Lucky Stars, is sprung from the pokey to get them back. The middle hour is all lame comedy, including a lewd and decidedly un-politically correct routine in a hotel room in which the boys fall all over each trying to catch a glimpse of girl in the shower. At one point the horse-faced veteran comic Richard Ng (from the Mr. Vampire films) tries to hypnotize a duck. Toward the end there's finally some effective, body-slamming action, the high point of which... Less