Divergence (2005)

Divergence (2005)
Original Title: 三岔口
Translation: Three-Way Intersection

 

Starring: Aaron Kwok Fu-Sing, Daniel Wu Yin-Cho, Ekin Cheng Yee-Kin, Gallen Lo Ka-Leung, Angelica Lee Sin-Je, Ning Jing, Yu Rongguang, Tommy Yuen Man-On, Samuel Pang King-Chi, Jan Lam Hoi-Fung, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai, Lam Suet
Director: Benny Chan
Action Director: Nicky Li Chung-Chi

 

For more than 20 years, I have had something of an obsession with the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography. Hollywood has never had anything like that. There has been a move to get the Academy Awards to have a best Stunt Coordination category (or something like that) for a number of years, but the Powers That Be have always dismissed it. Their reasoning is that stunt people already have their own awards, which are the Taurus/World Stunt Awards. Obviously, that excuse makes little sense: if a film can win Best Screenplay or Best Editing or Best Music at multiple awards ceremonies, including the Oscars, then why not Best Stunt Coordination?

In any case, Hong Kong has long prized itself on a quality action and recognizing it: the Best Action Choreography award goes all the way back to the 2^nd Annual Hong Kong Film Awards, for films made in 1982. And although the quality of Hong Kong cinema on the whole has fallen in recent years, I still follow up on that specific award. Back in early 2006, when I was checking out the nominees for Best Action Choreography at the 25^th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards, I was expecting a line-up to be something along the lines of Sha Po Lang; Seven Swords; House of Fury; The Myth; and Dragon Squad. That last one didn’t make the cut, with a film from Divergence by the late Benny Chan being included instead. Divergence hadn’t been covered by the then-active Kung Fu Cinema website, so I wondered what this film’s deal was. From an action standpoint, not much.

The film begins with a girl being chased through the streets of Hong Kong by some guy (Samuel Pang, of My Schoolmate, the Barbarian) that clearly has the intent to rob or rape her. When the girl runs into a lady she knows on the street, the guy hides to collect himself and figure out his next move. Suddenly, an unseen figure with a garotte strangles him to death.

Cut to a plane fight from Canada to Hong Kong, where policeman Suen (Aaron Kwok, of 2000 A.D. and The Storm Riders) is accompanying an enormous (in height and width) man by the name of Hung Chi-Man (Patrick Chow) into police custody. Apparently, Hung was an accountant working for rich businessman Yiu Tin-Chung (Gallen Lo, of A Warrior’s Tragedy and Vampire Controller), who does money laundering for the triads. Hung is to be the prosecutor’s star witness in the case against Yiu, but as with every single Hong Kong film I’ve ever seen, he’s not long for this world. He is taken out by a sniper rifle on the car ride out of the airport. The assassin is Koo (Daniel Wu, of House of Fury and “Into the Badlands”), a freelancer from the Mainland. Koo considers taking Suen out, too, but decides against it.

Lots of stuff starts happening from this point on. Koo takes an interest in Sullen Suen, telling his agent, Ting (Ning Jing, of 1911 and The Missing Gun), that he knew Suen’s girlfriend (Angelica Lee, of Princess D and The Eye). This is significant, because Suen’s girlfriend disappeared without a trace ten years ago. Suen spends his days teetering between “angry cop on the edge” and being all teary-eyed when he thinks about his girlfriend. Koo also starts having an affair with Ting, despite it being against the Hitman’s Handbook. While staking out a public event involving Yiu Tin-Chun’s rapper-dancer-boy band son, Yiu Ha (Tommy Yuen, of One Nite in Mongkok and Dragon Tiger Gate), Suen notices one thing that catches his eye. Elder Yiu’s personal attorney, To Hou-San (Ekin Cheng, of A Man Called Hero and Heroic Duo), is married to a lady that looks exactly like his missing girlfriend (also Angelica Lee). Is it her? Meanwhile, Yiu Ha goes missing.

This is where things get complicated. You see, Yiu Tin-Chun’s assets were frozen during the criminal case against him. Although the judicial order to release his assets has been given, his Triad buddies, led by Mr. Tsim (Lau Siu-Ming), have been pressuring him to give them their money. Yiu Tin-Chun thinks that Mr. Tsim has kidnapped his son in order to pressure him into transferring the money even faster. The kidnapping reaches the Hong Kong tabloids within days, which piques the curiosity of both Suen and Koo and puts them on a crash course with each other. And when Mao (Lam Suet, of The Mission and Exiled), To’s personal P.I. who’s investigating the disappearance of young Yiu, turns up dead, then Suen will find himself to be a suspect in the case, too.

Divergence is not an action film, but a multi-layered crime drama with some thriller elements. Lots of stuff happens, most of it relevant to story, some of it not. Seemingly random scenes that pop up in the story, including the opening scene, end up figuring into the narrative as the film progresses. There are number of things that don’t get explained as much as they should, like what happens to Koo and Ting at the end. I sorta think that the title should have been Convergence, since it is about how three separate characters end up on a collision course with each other.  The Brazilian title of the film is O Justiceiro[1], which translates into “The Vigilante,” which ultimately hints to the big twist at the end.

The film is defeated by a lack of forward momentum. Too much time is spent focusing on Aaron Kwok as he gets all teary eyed whenever he thinks about his missing girlfriend, or him stalking To’s wife…or both. Aaron Kwok’s overacting in many of these scenes is typical of Benny Chan, but takes away from the film as a whole. This repetitive melodrama takes away from the growing tension between Yiu and Tsim, which eventually erupts into violence at the end. I also wish that Koo had figured more into the main conflict of the story. Despite a good performance from Daniel Wu, Koo is just there after his big action sequence with Aaron Kwok.

There are two main action sequences in Divergence, staged by Benny Chan favorite Nicky Li Chung-Chi. The first one is a prolonged foot chase between Kwok and Wu, which starts on a busy highway and ends at a fish market where the two engage in a martial arts exchange while simultaneously trying to suffocate each other with plastic bags. The finale is set in the rain and is a violent firefight between two groups of Triads, ending with a final hand-to-hand exchange between Aaron Kwok and another character. The former sequence is actually filmed very well. The latter is a little lackluster.

Is Divergence good? Eh…sorta…I guess. The production values are solid. The cinematography is fine. A couple of the performances are good. The limited action sequences aren’t bad, but they certainly weren’t collectively deserving of an award…or even a nomination. I certainly would have chosen Dragon Squad over this one. The complex plot of the movie had potential, but needed fewer scenes of Aaron Kwok looking morose and wussy and more tension building…and more for Daniel Wu to do. It’s just okay in the end.

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[1] - “Justiceiro” in Portuguese means “Vigilante.” It the Portuguese name given to the Marvel character The Punisher (and all his films). It is also the alternate Brazilian title for Jet Li’s The Enforcer, aka My Father is a Hero.

Heroic Duo (2003)

Heroic Duo (2003)
Chinese Title: 雙雄
Translation: Duo

 

Starring: Leon Lai Ming, Ekin Cheng Yee-Kin, Francis Ng Chun-Yu, Karena Lam Ka-Yan, Raymond Wong Ho-Yin, Anson Leung Chun-Yat, Samuel Pang King-Chi, Rico Kwok Nik-Hang, Kam Hing-Yin, Xu Jinglei
Director: Benny Chan
Action Director: Stephen Tung Wai

 

Heroic Duo is almost the “lost” film in the filmography of the late Benny Chan, sandwiched between the universally-reviled Gen Y-Cops and Jackie Chan’s New Police Story. It has a unique premise, a fair amount of competently-staged action, and lots of cops getting mowed down, a Benny Chan trademark. It has good-looking actors turning in solid performances and Francis Ng playing a smooth-but-vile bad guy. So why don’t people talk about it as much as Benny Chan’s other movies, including his failures? Let’s see if we figure this out.

The movie begins at the house of a policeman, K. L. Cheung (Kenny Wong, of The Storm Warriors and Invisible Target), who has been taken hostage by a bunch of bad guys, led by The Mission’s Francis Ng. Cheung informs the head honcho that somebody is in prison, after which he is shot to death in front of his wife in cold blood.

Switch to the apartment of Senior Inspector Ken Li (Ekin Cheng, of The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero), who is plagued by dreams about rescuing some girl from drowning. Li is woken up by a series of phone calls from work regarding an urgent situation. One of the higher ups has recently entered the station’s evidence vault, stolen some files, and then set everything else on fire. During interrogation, the man claims to have no memory of stealing the files. He claims he was hypnotized, flashing back to a bar where a mysterious stranger handed him a drawing of a man and a little girl. Shortly after the interrogation, the officer steals a gun and shoots himself in the head.

As far-fetched as it may seem, Ken isn’t about to discard the hypnosis theory outright. He has men look up records of any registered hypnotists that have ever been prosecuted for crimes. This leads him to Jack Lai (Leon Lai, of City Hunter and Seven Swords), a trained hypnotist and former police psychiatric consultant. Lai has been convicted of manslaughter after apparently shooting a man at his apartment, but has managed to get supervised league to lecture to psychology students at the local university. Ken Li offers to help lighten his sentence if Jack will help him out on this case.

The stolen files belong to a group of policemen who were chosen to work as special security guards at an auction for a series of priceless Egyptian jewels. Jack thinks that whoever had the files stolen did so in order to create a psychological profile of each guard in order to steal the jewels. Ken takes Jack to the auction to keep watch over the proceedings. However, things go south when Jack hypnotizes Ken into stealing the jewels himself, which makes Ken a target for the police, led by the unhinged Officer Yeung (Raymond Wong, of Lifeline and The Death Curse). There is a big shoot-out between the police and the jewelry thieves, but the only one who ends up in police custody is Ken.

Obviously, hypnotism doesn’t go all that far as an excuse in legal matters, so it appears that Ken is up the creek. He does however, have an ace up his sleeve. One of the cops on the case is his long-suffering girlfriend, Brenda (Karena Lam, of Dragon Blade and The White Storm 2). Brenda knows Ken hasn’t done any wrong and Ken convinces her to do a background check on Jack, including his family and friends. You see, before hypnotizing Ken, Jack left in his mind a mental image of a drawing of calm, moonlight sea. Ken is able to recreate the image, which turns out to read “SOS” when viewed from a certain angle. We then learn that the main bad guy, whom Jack calls “Mastermind,” has not only kidnapped Jack’s wife, Mandy (Xu Jinglei, of The Warlords and The Shinjuku Incident), but K.L. Cheung’s widow and children, too. Jack has to get the jewels back in order to protect them, but when do bad guys ever keep their promises? The only external force that can help him is Ken (and Brenda), but Ken has the entire department on his heels…

I like the idea of a violent cop thriller revolving around hypnotism. I wish more had been done with the premise. The movie never really explains how the rather complex orders are given to those hypnotized. The camera does cut away from the scene once the characters are falling into trance, so it might be the traditional, “You will do my bidding…” That surely would have been so cartoony so as to deflate most of the film’s tension. The script also glosses over how exactly the dueling hypnotists can put people into trance so easily. There is a lot of talk about exploiting the back doors to people’s minds, but what we see on film feels more like something that would make a person feel uncomfortable, not give up their free will.

Benny Chan is known for his violent commercial action flicks that pile on the sentimentality whenever it needs to manipulate the audience’s feelings—except Gen-Y Cops. This one does it in measured doses during the second act, but then ruins the climax by hauling in the mawkishness with a dump truck. By the time there is only twenty minutes left, the heroes have converged at the villains’ hideout—a James Bondian-base built under a highway tunnel—and the bad guys’ gang has been whittled down to just a couple. That’s a lot of time for a cat-and-mouse game given the race against time that are heroes are engaged in. Thus we get these drawn-out, slow-motion shots of Leon Lai desperately trying to rescue his loved ones from confinement while the heroes and villains just look on. And when the heroes are able to turn the tables on the “Mastermind,” the idea is a lot sillier in execution than it looked on paper.

The action, staged by Stephen Tung Wai, is solid, albeit unexceptional. Although Tung Wai has been in the game since the 1970s and is often considered one of the top action directors in the business, I have rarely seen him do anything that rose above “workmanlike and efficient.” He can do “slick modern action” like nobody’s business, but very few of his films feature set pieces that are for the ages. This is the case here. Tung Wai fills the screen with gunfights, car chases, a few stunts that Jackie Chan would approve of, and the occasional burst of fisticuffs from Ekin Cheng. There are even a handful of moments where Benny and Stephen set the screen alight with pyrotechnics. I’m sure that when a certain character is enveloped in flames at the end, there is CGI used. But surprisingly enough, it wasn’t so bad as to distract me from the film as a whole, as CGI fire in Chinese cinema is wont to do even to this day. That said, the action still feels like the sort of generic thing that your average Hollywood stunt coordinator could’ve pulled off in 2003.

So why doesn’t anyone talk about Heroic Duo much anymore? I mean, I’m pretty sure people still have fond memories of Gen-X Cops and stuff like that. I’m guessing that once you get past the underdeveloped premise, the film is just too generic, even for an action auteur like Benny Chan. Stephen Tung Wai would have had to have upped his game to A Better Tomorrow levels, or Benny would have had to have cast Donnie Yen in Ekin’s stead, in order to give more chutzpah to movie about jewelry thieves with an unexpected modus operandi.

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.