DIRECTORS
Frankie
Chan
Jackie Chan
SCREENWRITERS
Jackie
Chan
Edward Tang
PRODUCER
Leonard Ho
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Ngok-Tai Wong
MUSIC
Chris Babida
CAST
Jackie Chan (Jackie)
Carol 'Do Do' Cheng (Ada)
Eva Cobo (Elsa)
Shôko Ikeda (Momoko)
Daniel Mintz (Amon)
Aldo Sambrell (Adolf)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 80m
U.S. release: July 18, 1997
Video availability: VHS - DVD
See also:
- Rumble
in the Bronx
- Rush
Hour
- Shanghai
Knights
- Shanghai
Noon
- Supercop
|
François
Truffaut once wrote, "I demand that a film express either
the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema."
Truffaut might have enjoyed the cinema of Jackie Chan, whose
films satisfy both demands. Chan does all his own stunts, ranging
from dangerous to suicidal: While shooting his 1986 Armour
of God, he jumped off a cliff, landed on his head, and was
left with a permanent dent in his skull. Watching the movie,
we see the joy of Chan in action; at the end are outtakes, and
we see the agony of Chan breaking his bones when a stunt fails.
Operation Condor, the "new" Jackie Chan movie,
is actually seven years old; it's the 1990 sequel to his head-denting
epic Armour of God, though you don't need to have seen
that movie to follow this one. Not that there's much to follow.
As I've said before, you watch an Astaire and Rogers musical
to see them dance, and you watch a Jackie Chan movie to see him
fight and clown around and risk his life. In both cases, the
plot is perfectly irrelevant.
This movie's plot, in fact, is the whole Indiana Jones
trilogy in condensed form. There are car chases and deadly crawly
things; there are vast treasures hidden in the desert and pursued
by Nazis and Arabs; there are elaborate death machines set in
motion; there are also not one but three women who can be relied
on to shriek, flail, and generally be all useless and girly when
confronted with danger. Sheesh, even Indy (and feminist viewers)
only had to endure one such damsel in distress; this movie is
like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with three Kate
Capshaws. I point this out not to be overly PC, but to warn fans
of last year's Supercop
that the gun-toting women in the ads for Operation Condor
are not cut from the same cloth as Supercop's Michelle
Yeoh. Now there was a woman who more than held her own
alongside Chan; her formidable exploits spoiled some of us for
the retro "Eek, a mouse" stuff in this movie.
Aside from that (and occasionally murky photography that detracts
from a few of the fight scenes), this is far and away the summer's
best comedy. I laughed more during any given five minutes than
I did during the entirety of Men
in Black. Chan, as always, is a goofy and endearing presence;
his small frame and expressive features link him with the great
silent comedians he idolizes and also make him a plausible action
hero. That's what he does as a director, too. He sets the tone
right away: when he escapes some irate natives by running inside
a large inflatable ball, there's a hilarious long shot of the
ball bouncing down the side of a high cliff. There's a great
sequence set in a hangar, where a huge fan alternately blows
and sucks Jackie and his enemies all around the room.
The major studios can learn a lot from Hong Kong. Jackie Chan,
John Woo, and others like Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark understand
the action genre better than Hollywood does. They hire appealing
actors, and they stage action cleanly and with imagination and
excitement. They don't need $100 million, they don't need computer
effects, and they don't need a cruise liner. |
