Today, going to look back at some of the films that put Jackie Chan on the map, thanks to the excellent set from Criterion. Starting with 1978’s Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, which is a silly movie, but it’s a fun silly movie. Chan would continue this style of slapstick-style comedy mixed with fantastic fighting sequences for a long time. In this film, with so many subplots that your head will spin, Chan plays a bumbling nobody who has a dream of learning kung fu. For awhile, he always seems to turn up at the wrong place at the right time, Some big villains get killed by kung fu experts when Chan is around, and it is Chan that people think did the killing, so his reputation grows as a hero. With his new status under his arm, he seeks out a kung fu master to teach him. In a running gag, the way Chan ends up learning all of his moves is through reading the pages of the master’s “kung fu manual,” and can seemingly pick up advanced moves from a quick look at each page. By the end of the film, Chan is a master, fighting off hoards of bad guys at a time, with 3 separate gangs coming after Chan and his master for some ancient artifacts they supposedly carry. Silly antics go hand-in-hand with incredible fighting sequences. You might laugh one second and “ooh and ahh” the next. I’ve admittedly not seen a lot of these old kung fu films before, but I was very impressed with the action scenes, made in a time long before computer-aided effects could make anyone look like a fighting master. ★★★
In Spiritual Kung Fu, Chan plays Yi-Lang, a student at a martial arts school under attack. A rival has stolen a book teaching the Seven Deadly Fists technique, which is supposedly unbeatable. Legend has it that only one other technique would stand a chance against it, the Five Style Fists. Unfortunately this book has been lost to time, and the wielder of the Seven Deadly Fists has been going around killing the masters of other schools. Thankfully, Yi-Lang has the spirits on his side. Five spirits descend from the heavens, each representing a style (Crane, Serpent, Dragon, Leopard, and Tiger), and they begin teaching Yi-Lang their long-lost techniques. The beginning of this movie is silly to the point of stupidity, and I very nearly gave up. The spirits are invisible to all by Yi-Lang, and their hijinks on the other students in his school are nothing more than tricky camera work and 70s style special effects, and it goes on way too long (nearly 30 minutes). Get past that though, and the high flying kung-fu is even better than the above film. The final hour of this film is incredible, if you can wade through the opening slosh. ★★★
Jackie Chan takes full control of a film for the first time in 1979’s The Fearless Hyena, his directorial debut. With more control comes more of Jackie’s personality, including all those silly bits, ramped up to level 10. If you are a big fan, you’ll find plenty to like, but I’m here for the action, and while there is less of it, what is there is still top-notch. The story revolves around a young kung fu student (seeing a trend here?) named Lung who is learning from his grandfather Pang-fei. Pang-fei doesn’t want Lung using his skills outside of their home, because his clan has been targeted by a rival in the past who would love to wipe out its surviving members. Lung is young and impetuous though, taking a job at a local kung fu school as an instructor of his own, but mostly as the hired muscle, to beat rival toughs so as to recruit more students at the school. His rise in fame does catch the eye of grandfather’s rivals though. In the final fight, Lung is trained in “emotional kung fu” to finally take out the big bad guy. Yes, it is as silly as it sounds. Slapstick runs amok, but not entirely wasteful. ★★
By 1983, Chan was no longer an up-and-comer, but a bonafide star, which can have good and bad consequences. The bad can result in a film like Fearless Hyena Part II. Not sure it is actually a sequel, because while the actors are the same, the characters seem different. This is just a really bad movie. There are a million characters that appear and disappear with little rhyme or reason, and the movie’s biggest star, Jackie, disappears for huge stretches. And when he’s gone, it is gravely apparent: the fighting isn’t nearly as fast-paced nor as intricate as when he’s involved. There’s a loose story about two men whose fathers are killed by a duo of bad guys, and the men go out to seek vengeance, but there’s so much else that goes on that I became hopelessly lost. Characters come in for a seemingly important reason, only to leave after their scene and never be heard from again. And that missing Jackie Chan problem… I first suspected something was up in the final fight sequence, when there is clearly re-used footage from the previous film. After finishing the movie, I read that Jackie left the film halfway through, left the studio entirely, to go to a rival studio. This prompted the director to finish the film with reused film and outtakes from the previous entry, while substituting Chan with a double where needed. Anything for a buck. We’re in a spiral here, hope the next one is better. ★
The Young Master was Chan’s first film at his new studio home (Golden Harvest), and was released in 1980 (before the previous studio was able to finish the above film sans Chan’s involvement). It’s a much more dramatic turn than his previous films, and is my favorite yet. He plays a young man named Dragon, who, along with his brother Tiger, was taken in as an orphan by a kung fu school master. The school raised the boys to be the brightest students in the establishment. The annual lion dance competition is coming up, and Tiger is slated to be the head, but he is injured just before the comp. Dragon takes his place, and during their fight as the Gold Dragon against the Black Dragon, Dragon (the person) sees that his brother Tiger is performing as Black Dragon, for the rival school. Turns out Tiger took a bribe to do so, and when he is found out, he flees his home in shame and hooks up with a gang of thugs. They free a convicted criminal named Kam, but unfortunately it is Dragon that authorities think did the job. Dragon runs aground with the local constable (and his family!) but it isn’t until Tiger is made to be the scapegoat of the villains’ latest bank robbery than Dragon gets a chance to save his brother from himself, and take down Kam too. Chan gets to show a more emotional side for the first time in these films, and while no one is ever going to wax poetic about his acting chops, it is nice to see him play something besides the goofball. ★★★½
Finishing up with 1985’s My Lucky Stars, the middle of a loose “trilogy” of films starring the same actors across the series. Chan get’s top billing due to his drawing power by 1985, and while he is the first person you see on screen, he disappears for a large section in the middle before returning in the end. The film involves a quintet of friends, all petty criminals tied to each other from having all been orphans in the same home as kids. Muscle (Chan) is a cop trying to take down a mob family, and he hails from the same orphanage. Muscle knows dirty cops are keeping him from his goal, so he recruits his five childhood buddies to infiltrate the bad guys’ lair, along with some eye candy in the form of a kung fu wielding badass woman nicknamed Poison Ivy. Action in the beginning, action in the end, with a lot of comedy in the middle. Not too bad, and seeing a martial arts film set in current day (well, 80s, that is) was a refreshing change of pace after all of the earlier films. A little hokey, but not terrible. ★★½
- TV series recently watched: The Wheel of Time (season 1), Star Trek Lower Decks (season 4), Colin From Accounts (season 1)
- Book currently reading: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Jons Movie Takes 