Project A: Part 2

1987 sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Dragon Ma is assigned to get rid of some gangsters in town. Meanwhile, some pirates from the last movie are looking for him to get their revenge. Apparently, they understood what was going on in the last movie better than I did and are pissed off about it.

This sequel delivers similar excitement from Part 1 in chunks, but it's not the wall-to-wall action of its predecessor and makes even less sense. There's some cuteness with a pair of handcuffs, an excellent fight scene early in the movie with bruising and flopping that look like outtakes from the first movie, and another 1920s comedy allusion. This time, it's a nod to Keaton and his most famous stunt. Mixed in with all this is a lot of silliness. I did like one line quite a bit: "I'm just wondering what to do with your corpses." That's something I might start saying to my students. The comedy that isn't physical comedy, just like in the first movie, falls completely flat, banging its head even harder than some of these stunt men. I did like this early exchange:

"You can't go around mugging ladies on the street!"
"But we're muggers!"

The motley collective of baddies is fun. There's Fatty, Shades, Stumpy Top Hat, Japanese Alan Thicke, and my personal favorite, Grand Meat Guy who gets all kinds of great one-liners during a Batman-esque "crusher" scene. "How 'bout a little oil?" "You're well lubricated." "I'm going to crush your knob off."

Stick around for the credits or you'll miss Jackie Chan singing a wonderful pop song. Actually, go ahead and miss that. Turn this off right before the credits unless you want to find out the name of the Japanese Alan Thicke.

Project A

1983 kung-fu action comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Gaily-dressed Navy guys fight crooked cops and mischievous pirates. Lots of folks wind up concussed.

I love the nods to my man Buster and Harold Lloyd here, and this will be a ton of fun for fans of kung-fu movies and silent comedies. Since I'm a fan of both, it seems like Jackie Chan made this just for me! I will say this--the comedy in this is awfully silly, and almost caused me to drop this another point or two. The plot isn't anything worth talking about either. It's typical Hong Kong martial arts movie nuttiness with more characters than necessary and a lot of extraneous scenes. The latter exist to stuff in more fight scene while the former are on-screen to get kicked in the head or thrown around. Chan takes his lumps as well because he's never an invincible kung-fu action hero. His stunts are as impressive as they usually are, and the fight choreography is completely ludicrous but endlessly entertaining. Chan et al. showcase fast flailing moves and insane bone-crushing stunts. I've never seen so many heads bouncing off floors, dressers, banisters, or whatever other parts of the scenery that are constructed just so heads can bounce off them. As always, Chan's fight choreography uses the setting and its props in excitingly creative and humorous ways. Vibrant and painful stuff. I liked how the camera would linger on stunt men as they writhe and groan after a particularly painful head bounce. A highlight involves a clock tower.

Oh, and for you Sammo Hung completists, he's in this one as a sort of Jackie Chan sidekick.

Fantasy Mission Force

1982 action movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: It's World War II, and the Japanese, while attempting to take over the world, have already captured the leaders of France, Germany, England, and America. The latter, it should be mentioned, is Abraham Lincoln. Officials get together to find somebody who can save them and decide that Lieutenant Don Wen is their man. Rejected heroes: "Snake" Plissken, James Bond (the Roger Moore one, if you care), and Rocky Balboa who is not suitable for military action. Wen assembles a ragtag crew to save the world.

Lots of weirdness here with varying degrees of entertainment value. First, if you really need a coherent plot with your action movies, you've just got to avoid this one. It's episodic, and none of the individual episodes really go together in a way that makes sense. Not only that, the individual scenes don't really make much sense on their own. Not to say that this doesn't entertain because bits and pieces of it manage to do just that. You get a musical number, some Benny Hill speeded-up weirdness, a bunch of masked flying Amazon women wielding ribbons, Jackie Chan fighting while holding a chicken, some hopping zombie things, disembodied hands and ghost women in a haunted house, and some Nazi Japanese riding on hoopties that look like they're straight out of a post-apocalyptic action flick. I expected Mel Gibson to waltz in and demand gasoline or something. Almost all of the humor in this falls completely flat, and the characters aren't really interesting at all. Except one: Brigitte Lin's (Bride with White Hair) great as Lily, all in leather and thigh-high boots, winning drinking contests like Indiana Jones' girlfriend and waxing acrobatically. She's fun to watch, as is a fight sequence with Jackie Chan (not really the star of this, by the way) at the end. Ultimately, this one is just too confusing and goofy to be completely entertaining. I'm also pretty positive that this isn't really all that historically accurate either.

The Legend of Drunken Master

1994 kung-fu movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Posters have invaded China, and folks are panicking. They call on Jackie Chan to save the day, and [Spoiler Alert! Although the poster to the left actually spoils it all anyway.] he uses his drunken fighter style to punch holes in the evil posters. Comically.

I didn't think much of Jackie Chan before I saw this movie. I had seen a couple fistfuls of kung-fu flicks and liked the genre, and everything I knew about Jackie Chan--his general reputation, the small sampling of his work that I'd seen--made me assume that he was like a kung-fu sell-out or something, too popular or new school to be worth my time. The Legend of Drunken Master floored me when I first saw it, and the terrifically creative and acrobatic fight scenes still floor me today. The plot of this one, along with some embarrassing dubbing and some less-than-stellar acting, isn't anything to write home about. Luckily, the bulk of this is made up of those action sequences. The first, mostly taking place beneath a train, shows off rapid movements and some choreography that utilizes every square inch of that confined space. But the fight scenes just get better and better. A lengthy climax in a factory is fast and furious and eye-popping, featuring a guy with legs that moved so quickly and rubbery that I thought for sure they were computer-generated legs. But I think I like the two fight scenes in the middle--one where the character first demonstrates his drunken style to beat down a collective of goons and another where he and a partner take on a ton of dudes with axes--even better. Jackie Chan's known for his stunts, his fluid movements, and his use of humor and props. Here, at nearly forty, Chan's at the top of his game, and if you're a fan of kung-fu movies at all, there are several action sequences that will have you reaching for the rewind button so that you can see them again. They're good enough to help you forgive all the attempts at humor that fall completely flat. The original Drunken Master movie from 1978 is also worth watching, by the way. Compared to this version, it's more traditional and not nearly as flashy, but it's still a solid martial arts flick with that white-haired old guy Siu Tien Yuen who I really like.

Who Am I?

1998 premake of The Bourne Identity

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Special agent Jackie Chan tumbles out of a helicopter, bangs his head on a tree branch, and forgets who he is. He befriends a tribe of Native Americans living in South Africa but reconnects with society after helping a woman win a off-road racing event. Suddenly, everybody's trying to kill him, and he finds himself in a situation that he must kick his way out of.

The last twenty minutes or so contains some great kick-'em-in-the-noggin action with a dangerous glassy slide and a furious fight on a rooftop. Most of what precedes that final act is just dumb and confusing action story-telling. There are twists and turns that either don't make sense or just don't work, some awful acting, a bunch of explosions, a bunch more explosions, a car chase, some guns. It feels derivative, not a problem if the action's got me on the edge of my seat or if the characters are interesting. That's not really the case here though. I like my martial arts movies simple. I just want to see cats kicking each other. I don't need all this story, especially this sort of convoluted story that I have to pay a lot of attention to. That final twenty minutes? That's something I could watch again. The rest of it? Don't need it. By the way, I don't think he actually makes that face he's making on the movie poster above at any time during this movie. So if you were planning on renting this to see him make that face, don't waste your time. You'd be better off enlarging the image and shaking your monitor around and making explosion sounds with your lips.

The Karate Kid

2010 remake

Rating: 12/20 (Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Same as the 1984 version of The Karate Kid except the thirty-five year old "kid" Ralph Macchio has been replaced with Will Smith's daughter. Oh, and it takes place in China and has a Lady Gaga song replacing that Joe Esposito "You're the Best . . . Around" song.

When I was a kid, I was in a book with Grover, the Sesame Street Muppet. My mom or grandmother or somebody had sent away for it. It had my picture in it, and Grover used my name. And you can bet that I felt special as a seventeen-year-old kid, the only boy in my high school who co-starred with Grover in a picture book! I imagine this version of The Karate Kid is a lot like that only Will Smith's daughter's parents have a lot more money to spend on the project. The story is nearly identical, cheesy layer after cheesy layer. I think it might (shockingly) have even more montages though. The incomparable Jackie Chan replaces the incomparable Pat Morita, and the fight scenes are, and this is no compliment, a bit flashier. The big climactic "Crane" thing from the first movie is replaced by something incoherent and goofy, and probably because of the 1984 movie, I knew it was coming and just had to sort of wait for it in agony. "Oh, I bet Will Smith's daughter is going to try to pull that off in the tournament," I groaned. Jaden Smith isn't awful, even with all the bad lines she's forced to read, and the endless training montages looked authentic enough. The kung-fu aficionado in me probably liked those best. That whole jacket thing didn't quite have the impact that "Wax on/Wax off" had though. I also liked the lone fight scene with old man Jackie Chan beating up some children although I wished those children would have been dressed as skeletons. The biggest problem I had with this remake was its length. At five hours and twenty-three minutes, it just seemed a little long. I probably could have done without the couple hours of violin recitals and the montages could have been cut in half from fourteen to seven. I think Will Smith should have his daughter remake Teen Wolf next, by the way. Or maybe the three Back to the Futures! Hell, Jackie Chan could even take Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown in that one, right?