Vanguard

On approach, Vanguard could be mistaken for a spiritual sequel to Police Story 3: Supercop, a belated opportunity for Jackie Chan and director Stanley Tong to demonstrate that, thirty years removed from their peak, there's still life in these old dogs yet. This follow-up presumption does pan out but not for any reason that would actually translate into an enjoyable filmgoing experience. Vanguard, a ham-fisted slog for the majority of its runtime, has its roots in scenes felt superfluous for Supercop's international release - the pre-handover courting sequences that sought to draw a line between Chan's valorous Hong Kong policeman and the drilled duty of Michelle Yeoh's starched, CCP, suit. 

Vanguard then fulfils the East Asian hegemony proposed by Supercop, with Chan now completely subsumed into a mainland filmmaking system that presents as the buttoned-up antithesis of the island city's permit flaunting, vérité, action cinema. Worth noting as well that, politically speaking, Vanguard is also acutely revolting. The film is a hatchet job that depicts Muslims as pointedly unprincipled bumblers, easily undone in their gauche, money-grubbing, efforts to kidnap noble Chinese businessmen. Somewhere in this agitprop Chan plays Tang Huanting, the Bosley to a team of young, presentable, private military agents who operate, unmolested, in any country they see fit. Vanguard is the spy film as reassuring propaganda, hardly a crime only Chinese filmmaking is guilty of, but where similar, western, efforts at least revel in their sweaty rule-breaking, Vanguard adopts the humourless stance of the prefect. 

Of course, this disingenuous hectoring could be forgiven if Vanguard worked itself up to the bone-crunching melodrama that made Chan's name. Sadly Tong's film is cautious to a fault, burying any physical sense of excitement in treacly, computer generated, nonsense. Chan himself - admittedly well into his sixties now - is barely called upon, instead functioning as a floating seal of approval for younger action stars like the charmless Yang Yang or the underutilised Miya Muqi. Viewers desperate for Vanguard to portray any real jeopardy will have to stick around for the end credit outtakes to catch a glimpse of an overcast, choppy canal before it is transformed into a Zambian waterfall. Chan, with Miya aboard, capsizes their jet-ski then disappears completely from the static shot. Chan is unseen for 15 long seconds, leaving the worried, and slightly concussed, looking actress to fling her head around searching for her older co-star. Rescue boats eventually race in, pulling a breathless looking Chan up from the opposite, obscured, side of the overturned water craft. 

Rumble in the Bronx

In an attempt to finally crack the American market, Jackie Chan is transplanted to New York for some Crocodile Dundee style culture clash. Viewed today, Rumble in the Bronx is refreshing on several levels. Firstly, Chan makes very little attempt to modify his policeman persona for his new audience. Chan is portrayed as deeply, remorselessly, uncool. No attempt is made to disguise the fact that Chan is a middle-aged man either. He doesn't have any cool affectations or props and everything he wears is made out of stone washed denim. Neither is Chan particularly aggressive. When cornered by a pack of delinquent bikers Chan doesn't batter his way through. He flees, cowering in an alleyway.

Despite ditching on a convenience store job (and a more age appropriate pairing with Anita Mui) to romance Françoise Yip's lingerie model, Chan is positioned as a stable, responsible adult. His presence immediately straightens out his new squeeze and the petty criminals she runs with. Chan admonishes them for wasting their lives, making a heartfelt plea for peace. Contemporary kids must've rolled their eyes into the fucking ground. In that sense Chan is taking a similar tact to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop. Both films juggle action and social responsibility, transforming an action vehicle into a brochure for an after-school fitness programme. Masculinity is likewise equated with the ability to give back to your community.

As ever, Jackie Chan is an absolute joy to watch; the psychological pace of film's action dictated by Chan's now straight-laced screen persona. Fights are tight and frenzied, with lots of inserts of smashing glass and bloody, alarming, escalation. Chan flings himself around mercilessly, demonstrating that he doesn't need any green screen assistance. He is the special effect. The star scrambles all over urban detritus, hijacking a series of exciting vehicles to crash into his enemies. Director Stanley Tong overcranks the action so that we can always recognise Jackie Chan within the danger. Time stalls so we can gaze at Chan's actual body tumbling towards something solid and indifferent. Flubs aren't concealed either. Deep in the third act a key stunt very obviously goes wrong - Chan's ankle bends then breaks as he lands on a speeding hovercraft. His character doesn't even flinch. He's too busy rolling towards a Mafia goon to even care.

Police Story 3: Super Cop

The great tragedy of Police Story 3: Super Cop is that Michelle Yeoh and Jackie Chan didn't make five more films just like it. The duo compliment each other perfectly; Yeoh's balletic wushu angles provide a graceful, feminine contrast to Jackie Chan's bruised forearm brawling. Yeoh also matches Chan for pure, suicidal craziness. The third act sees her clawing desperately to stay attached to a speeding mini-van, then jumping a motorcycles onto a speeding train. It's equality in lunacy. Although the pair's relationship is purely platonic, there is a courtship at work in Super Cop. Cosmetically focused on two exceptional public servants smashing a Golden Triangle drug ring, Super Cop seems to be as much about the then impending handover of Hong Kong, from the UK to China, with Jackie Chan as an anthropomorphic manifestation of the idiosyncratic island.

Loaned out to the Chinese by windy, idle British civil servants, Chan is escorted around the training centres where China's youth is moulded into a muscled collective. Similarities are stressed through ability and ideological concerns - heroin is bad, essentially. Before becoming Chan's physical equal, Yeoh is positioned as the public face of the Chinese regime. Professional, modern and, crucially, female, Yeoh is China as a personable, forward-thinking nation. A glut of mainland location shooting stresses vast, untamed expanses in stark contrast to the suffocating urban sprawl of the Hong Kong set Police Story films. Super Cop is especially notable because it takes a wildly individualistic performer like Jackie Chan, and matches him with another just like him. The couple don't clash, their affiliation isn't complicated by sexuality or romance, instead they work together harmoniously for the greater good. Super Cop is a brochure, teasing an idealised, synchronised relationship between Hong Kong and China.