Who Am I? (1998)

Who Am I? (1998)
Aka: Jackie Chan’s Who Am I?
Chinese Title: 我是誰
Translation: Who Am I?

 

Starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Ferre, Ron Smerczak, Ed Nelson, Mirai Yamamoto, Ron Smoorenburg, David Leung
Director: Benny Chan
Action Director: Sing Ga Ban (Jackie Chan Stuntman Association)

 

Back in high school, my main dealer in quality Chinese cinema was a good friend of mine whom I’ll call Jaak-tin. Being Chinese, he had access to a lot of Chinese films that hadn’t been released by American distributors at that time, including a number of newer Jackie Chan films, like Mr. Nice Guy and this film. As a result, I got to see both of those films (in addition to others) a number of months before mainstream American audiences did, which was indeed a good thing.

I actually rolled my eyes when I first read about this one (I believe it was mentioned in The Ultimate Jackie Chan Sourcebook). It mentioned Jackie Chan going to Africa and losing his memory while living with an African tribe. I thought to myself, “Oh gosh! This is probably going to have a lot of KOMIC HIJINKS! from Chan and not a lot of good action.” So when Jaak-Tin lent the film to me, I was a bit surprised that he had already gotten a copy of it (my reaction, “Wow! It’s been released already?”), but a bit weary of what was in store for me. Thankfully, the film I got was one of the last great Jackie Chan films ever made.

It did take a little while before I came to have my own copy of it, though. In the meantime, my friend Paul, whom I helped get into the genre, bought this film and it became the source of much mirth among our group of friends. In addition to watching the movie’s fight scenes over and over again, we would quote the film countless times (especially Paul) and even name a theoretical fighting style from a line of one of the characters. It is indeed a special film to me for all these reasons.

Early on in the film, we have a crack team of operatives, including Jackie, a Hong Kong cop, attack and capture a group of scientists in South Africa. They are told that the scientists are EEEEEEVIL, bent on getting hold of a recently fallen meteor that may or may not have special explosive properties, that they want to use for their NEFAAAAAAAAARIOUS purposes. Well, the team is successful and the scientists are captured. Unfortunately, the team leader betrays them and makes their plane crash (in Namibia, I think). Only Jackie survives the ordeal, although he lost his memory when the plane crashed. He is found and nursed back to health by an African tribe, with whom he stays for a while.

Some time later, a Japanese brother-sister team of drivers are in the middle of a cross-country race through a couple of African countries. Their SUV breaks down and the brother is bitten by a snake. Luckily for the sister, Yuki (Mirai Yamamoto, The Boy from Hell), Jackie Chan is nearby and he is able to save the brother with an ingenious coconut IV, in addition to fixing the car. The three go back to Johannesburg where Chan becomes a local hero because his life-saving awesomeness. This attracts the attention of Morgan (Ron Smerczak, Operation: Delta Force 3 AND 5), a CIA operative, and Cristine Stark (Michelle Ferre), a journalist. Despite the efforts of Yuki and Cristine, Jackie still can’t remember what happened at the beginning of the film. There’s a so-stupid-it’s-funny scene where Yuki tries to help Jackie by popping up out of nowhere and scaring him.

Unfortunately, all this attention is short-lived, as Jackie Chan still can’t remember exactly who he is and before long, he’s being hunted by the South African Secret Service (or whatever you call it), who have figured out that he was involved in the kidnapping of the scientists. Of course, they refuse to believe that he’s really an amnesiac and that he doesn’t know what exactly happened. They’re ready to throw him in prison when he escapes, Jackie Chan-style. Right after that, some hired killers try to erase Chan, leading to a wacky car chase in which he, Yuki, and Cristine try to drive Yuki’s SUV while handcuffed.

Jackie’s quest leads him to Rotterdam where the pieces of the puzzle slowly start to come into the place. You see, the meteor really did have strong explosive properties and Morgan is really a double-agent working for some evil arms manufacturers. The scientists were kidnapped in order to develop a super weapon (“Imagine a machine gun with the power of a ballistic missile” is how one character puts it) that could then be sold to interested parties for a very large quantity of film. Cue some really good fight and stunt sequences.

Despite having some really good action, the film isn’t wall-to-wall fighting and stuntwork. It takes a while for the film to really get going, with the first real fight occurring only near the end of the second act. Once the film does get going, it never relents and is consistently entertaining. This is thanks to Jackie Chan’s always-inventive fight direction and charismatic acting. Benny Chan, a commercial director who’s best known for his fast-paced police thrillers, gives this film a good sense of pace, although Jackie’s presence means that the action won’t have the hard edge many other of Benny Chan’s films would have (this would change in New Police Story). However, this wouldn’t be a Benny Chan film without a number of policemen getting offed, which can be seen in the beginning of this film. Nonetheless, this is more of a Jackie Chan film than a Benny Chan film; the aforementioned New Police Story would strike a better balance between the Benny’s and Jackie’s styles.

Observant viewers will notice that the plot is very similar to that of Police Story IV: First Strike (1996). Yes, both films deal with a fish-out-of-water Hong Kong cop taking corrupt government agents dealing in powerful weapons. Both films also benefitted from being set in two countries outside of Hong Kong (The Netherlands and South Africa here; Russia and Australia in First Strike). It is the earlier film, however, that does a slightly better job at keeping it’s plot straight, since this film has a lot of ideas and characters that just seem to appear and disappear whenever convenient. The whole bit about the South African Secret Service is a logical direction for the story to take, but it’s forgotten about as soon as Chan goes to Rotterdam. The same can be said about Mirai Yamamoto’s character, who disappears from the film at the same point. More baffling is the initial subplot of Chan being taken in by the African tribe that really doesn’t go anywhere at all. At least in Shanghai Noon, Chan got a Native American wife who helped him get out of a number of pickles during the film’s running time. Jackie Chan as a member of an African tribe has some potential, but is forgotten about as soon as he gets to Johannesburg, and makes me wonder why it was even included.

Another problem with the story is that there is simply no urgency. I mean, I would expect a little bit more suspense from an evil plot to sell machine guns that could easily take out entire city blocks to evil arms dealers, but said weapons and the meteorite fragments are nothing more than McGuffins during the film. Had one of the bad guys been armed with a pistol that had the destructive power of an antitank weapon, it might’ve been a bit more compelling. Instead, we get one sequence where we see a laboratory blowing up because of the meteorite, and the dodgy CGI effects in said scene make it seem funnier than anything else.

The last flaw of the film, which may or not may not be a flaw depending on who you talk to, is the acting outside of Jackie Chan. Jackie is Jackie and, speaking English or Cantonese, is always a charismatic and likeable guy. The other actors fare less well, which often leads to some unintended laughs. Michelle Ferre, whose only film credit is this, is especially amateurish in this film. My friend Paul’s favorite bit is where she reveals herself to be a member of the CIA. Her change of tone from what she was previously saying is so abrupt that it makes us laugh every time. Ron Smerczak, a B-movie veteran in the United States, fares a little bit better. Ed Nelson, who plays the General, is an experienced TV actor and plays his role broad enough that there no menace from him or from the organized crime guy he’s dealing business with. They do get some good lines, though (“You missed! You idiot! And you, short-stuff! You got a fraction of a second to hand over that disk!”)

Unsurprisingly, it’s the action where this film really excels. It won the 1999 Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Design, beating out Dion Lam’s CGI-heavy choreography from the popular The Storm Riders and Stephen Tung’s down-to-earth action direction in the modern-day Jet Li thriller Hitman. The action is all pretty solid until the finale, which is one of the best Jackie Chan fights of all time (in my opinion) and arguably his best fight since 1994 (when he did Drunken Master II). Some may argue that that isn’t so much of a compliment, considering the number of films he did after 1994 that had disappointing finales (Thunderbolt; Rumble in the Bronx; The Medallion; The Myth; Rush Hour 2; Mr. Nice Guy; etc.). That doesn’t take away from the fact that the last fight is ten pounds of awesome in an five-pound bag.

The first set piece is when Jackie escapes from the South African agents. It’s reminiscent of another fight in Project A 2, but better. He’s handcuffed to a chair and has to use his agility and wits to get free and hold the agents at bay. It ends with an ingenious stunt where Jackie wraps a cord around a bucket, slips the cord around him, and then does a spinning free fall to the ground. The next big fight is in the streets of Rotterdam, which feature falling pianos and wooden clogs. You see, for some reason Jackie is barefoot during the fight, leading him to take a lot of physical punishment in the name of COMEDY! He then puts on a pair of clogs and starts dishing that punishment back to the thugs. It’s a really neat prop fight.

The final fight is a gem. Jackie Chan is on the roof of a building with an incriminating disk and is confronted by two fighters, one Caucasian (Ron Smoorenburg, Fighting Fish and Avenging Fist) and a Chinese (David Leung, member of the Sing Ga Ban). The Chinese fighter is a specialist in a hand-based style, one that uses a lot of circular punches, like choy li fut. The Caucasian is a super-kicker, not unlike Ken Low. The fight begins with a 30-second bout with David Leung, who wins. Jackie challenges him again and gets the upper hand, beating him with his own tie and suit jacket (there’s a subtle bit of comedy where Ron sees this and removes his own tie and jacket).

After getting his [butt] handed to him, David lets Ron fight. After fighting for some time, both of the bad guys gang up on Chan, who proceeds to use the layout of the roof of the building to his own advantage, fighting in, on, under, and around numerous fixtures on the roof in order to not be knocked off the building. There is some very complex choreography on display, and Chan is able to find the perfect balance between martial arts, death-defying stuntwork, and physical humor, including a nice bit with cement bags at the end, during this long fight. Both of the bad guys fight brilliantly, although if you watch the documentary Jackie Chan: My Stunts, you’ll know that Smoorenburg was doubled by Bradley James Allan in some scenes because he couldn’t get the rhythm down.

I find that last fact to be very interesting, because it proves that just being good in the ring or on the dojo floor doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be good in front of the camera (or behind the camera choreographing the fight). Compare Jhoon Rhee’s performance in When Tae Kwon Do Strikes with, say, Dick Wei or Alexander Lo Rei. All three are tae kwon do-trained and Jhoon Rhee is an international Grand Master or something, but it’s the other two who have always looked better than Mr. Rhee. Smoorenburg obvious had the kicking skills, but seemed to lack the rhythm and sense of pacing that is very important to a Hong Kong fight. The same thing prevented Ho Sung Park from being the lead villain in Drunken Master II. Had Ho had more rhythm and endurance, he might be more well known today than Ken Low is. You need a lot more than just technique to be a great screen fighter, especially in a Jackie Chan film. Ignorant people say that all his films are the same, but there is so much that goes into a well-choreographed Jackie fight that you just can’t help but respect Chan, his stuntment, and whoever he hires to be the lead villain.

What I particularly liked about this one fight is that it is an inversion of the Northern Legs/Southern Fist final fight that we used to see in those old Seasonal films starring people like Tan Tao Liang, John Liu, and Hwang Jang Lee. In those, you’d have two heroes (one fist master and one kicker) take on a seemingly invincible villain. Here you have a hero with a threshold for pain thousands of times greater than any normal person take on two bad guys, a fist fighter and a kicker. It’s a neat way to bring us back to the old days while still featuring the best of modern fight choreography. Oh, and the fight ends with Chan running and sliding down the side of a building, a stunt that, even with wires, is darn impressive.

Who Am I? has a very large number of supporters, although a lot of them seem to enjoy the film simply because they think it was step up from his previous film, Mr. Nice Guy. This is similar to way Godzilla fans love Godzilla 2000 simply because it wasn’t the Tri-Star Godzilla. I’m really not part of that particular group of people, simply because I like Mr. Nice Guy a lot myself. There was a time that it was in my top five Jackie Chan films, although it fell off that list as time went on in part because I didn’t like the finale. While the mass destruction caused by Jackie Chan driving a truck through a mansion made of glass is indeed entertaining, Chan should’ve had a lengthy battle with Richard Norton to top it off. We didn’t get that, so I think of that film as merely a good Jackie Chan vehicle and not a great one.

Jackie Chan would come close to one-upping this fight with the final fight of his next film, Gorgeous. I like this end fight better, although the finale to that film has a lot going for it, too. Both end fights are certainly better than most anything he’s done since, no doubt about it. But unlike Gorgeous, Who Am I? is first and foremost an action film, and a darn good action film to boot. The action sequences are tons of fun and Jackie is his usual self. The script has some problems, and the supporting cast isn’t that great, but those become insignificant when seen in the great scheme of things: Jackie Chan hurting himself for our entertainment.