Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (19 page)

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-life 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.

“There can’t be two tigers on the mountain,” is an old Chinese proverb, and Chan quoted it often after firing Liang and taking over the film. Gutting a major supporting role by Andy Lau
, Jackie brought back Ti Lung
and Anita Mui
to reshoot and design new sequences over a six-month period. He complained that Liang only wanted him to do drunken boxing during the final battle, then to wipe out nearly hundreds with it. Instead, Jackie set about establishing the drunken style earlier in the film, and creating a spectacular, albeit more intimate, climatic battle.

Meanwhile, Liang took Lau and went off to make
Drunken Master
III
(1994), a weak attempt at payback. Even so, the master of the kung fu movie did manage to complete one more film prior to his retirement,
Drunken Monkey
(2003), for a temporarily resurrected Shaw Brother Studio film unit. Co-starring Jacky Wu Jing
and Gordon Liu
Chia-hui
, it was a fitting kung fu-filled finale that also served as a metaphor for the director’s triumph over adversity and illness (Liang beat cancer in addition to everything else).

Back at
Drunken Master II
, Chan was obviously inspired to live up to Liang’s kung fu skills. The final fight, in an audaciously designed metal foundry set, is among the best things Chan has ever accomplished, mixing amazing martial arts and acrobatics with involving and emotional moments — culminating with Huang Fei-hong drinking industrial alcohol to achieve his ethereally unbeatable Drunken Master status. Rather than take on dozens as Liang had reportedly intended, Chan narrowed his focus to a few, culminating in a one-on-one tour de force with his friend, ex-bodyguard, training-mate, and super-kicker Ken Lo
.

“In the last fight scene, I was going to fight someone else (Ho Sun-park
),” Jackie revealed. “He’s a very good marital artist, but he couldn’t get the rhythm down — he keeps twisting his ankle, so I used Ken Lo
. I had Ken train hard for three months even before we started filming it.”

But even then, accidents happened. Adding to his list of on-set injuries (dislocated shoulder, dislocated sternum, broken fingers, broken eyebrow ridge, dislocated cheek bone, crushed legs) was a broken nose when the alcohol-powered Jackie charged his adversary.

“I’ve broken bones from head to toe,” Jackie said. “But broken legs and fingers don’t matter. I hurt for weeks and months, but my films give people memories that can keep for years.” And many people think of
Drunken Master II
as Jackie’s kung fu masterpiece.

The only discordant note in the finished film was the final scene where, in the original Hong Kong release, Huang is shown to have been rendered mentally incompetent by his ordeal — his performance enough to make even Jerry Lewis cringe (in fact, the scene was removed from the American version).

Drunken Master II
was a critical and financial bonanza, and clearly the best movie Jackie Chan
made since
Project A
II.
And with it, he had accomplished something no other action star had ever done: he gained entry to the mainland. Only Jackie Chan
films were allowed into Red China. Although ticket prices there were less than a dollar, the cinemas had a potential audience of billions. With voracious audiences in Japan
and China, and a Hong Kong studio willing to give him all the time and money in the world, Chan was unique: clearly the most popular action star in the world, the only filmmaker with unquestioned authority, resources, and power, and the only man on the planet willing to die for his audience.

“I’d much rather die on a movie set than in a car or plane crash,” he said. “I love making movies ... and I don’t want to die for nothing.” The writing on the marquee was clear. It was time for him to conquer the one mountain that had always eluded him. It was time to return to America.

Even though
Police Story
had been the hit of the New York Film Festival, Hollywood was slow to accept Chinese-style action, but the underground video world was quick to pick up the slack. Intrigued by a book on the subject, as well as television specials that were broadcast on the Arts and Entertainment and Discovery channels (hmmm…wonder who wrote and/or instigated those?), thrill-seekers sought out Chan’s films in Chinatowns and through vaguely legal specialty mail-order houses.