Righting Wrongs

Although threaded with slop skits and broad, slapstick intrusions that are painfully at odds with the stakes in play, when the credits roll on Righting Wrongs it's clear that Corey Yuen's film was premised on real bitterness. Like the director's earlier girls-with-guns film Yes, Madam!, Wrongs compartmentalises its most exciting elements - in this case Cynthia Rothrock's Senior Inspector Cindy and Yuen Biao's murderous criminal prosecutor Ha Ling-Ching - only allowing them scenes that detail their crimefighting methodology or their ability to physically (spectacularly) fend off assassins. It's clear then that Wrongs either doesn't want or doesn't expect us to relate to these characters - the former notion borne out by an alternative ending screened for Chinese mainland audiences that actively attempted to undermine the despondent mood generated by the Hong Kong edit's conclusion. 

Instead, significant passages of Righting Wrongs revolve around director Yuen's on-screen performance as Bad Egg, a slacker detective who refuses to wear socks and snoozes on stake-outs after gorging himself on fast food. Rothrock and Yuen Biao's characters exist in a separate, superheroic realm, only called upon to enliven the film when the central investigation has gotten slack. Bad Egg does end up serving a dramatic purpose though: he lulls the audience into a false sense of security. The gentle comedy of his subplot fosters an expectation that he will survive as a human albatross around Cindy's neck, generating an extra layer of difficulty for the Inspector when she is navigating the film's concluding chapter. This notion does not pan out. Neither does an assumption that Rothrock and Yuen Biao's characters will work together to take down the corrupt policeman orchestrating the film's mayhem. Their arrivals to the finale are staggered, their strength halved. Cathartic headshots give way to a crisp one-on-one fight - allegedly devised by action supremo Sammo Hung - then a sequence of stunt work so unexpectedly hair-raising that Jackie Chan could be proud of it. 

Jackie Chan in the 1980s

The 1980s was a period of great change for Jackie Chan. The actor-director began the decade re-working the bumpkin persona he had minted in the 70s under Yuen Woo-ping. Chan and his collaborators had been so successful in bringing comedy to the traditional kung-fu film that he was stuck replaying a formula; remixing the same basic format over and over again until it ended up the Hong Kong equivalent of a movie brat disaster.

A run-in with organised crime facilitated an ultimately disappointing attempt to break the American market. Chan was stuck with a string of disinterested, sometimes antagonistic, genre directors, bristling at his lack of control. The star bounced back by focusing on several collaborations with his Peking Opera School 'brothers' Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Borrowing the rough and ready approach of the Hong Kong New Wave, the trio worked together to devise an electrifying new action template that would end up making Chan the biggest box office draw in Asia.

Below are links to my thoughts on all of Jackie Chan's 80s output, ordered by their Hong Kong release date. Just click on the title to be taken to the review.

1980
The Young Master (1980) dir. Jackie Chan
Battle Creek Brawl (1980) dir. Robert Clouse

1981
The Cannonball Run (1981) dir. Hal Needham

1982
Dragon Lord (1982) dir. Jackie Chan

1983
Fantasy Mission Force (1983) dir. Chu Yen-ping
Fearless Hyena II (1983) dir. Lo Wei
Winners and Sinners (1983) dir. Sammo Hung
Project A (1983) dir. Jackie Chan

1984
Cannonball Run II (1984) dir. Hal Needham
Wheels on Meals (1984) dir. Sammo Hung

1985
My Lucky Stars (1985) dir. Sammo Hung
The Protector (1985) dirs. James Glickenhaus and Jackie Chan
Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (1985) dir. Sammo Hung
Heart of Dragon (1985) dir. Sammo Hung
Police Story (1985) dir. Jackie Chan

1987
Armour of God (1987) dir. Jackie Chan
Project A II (1987) dir. Jackie Chan

1988
Dragons Forever (1988) dir. Sammo Hung
Police Story Part II (1988) dir. Jackie Chan

1989
Miracles (1989) dir. Jackie Chan

Eastern Condors

Sammo Hung gathers a who's who of Hong Kong action cinema to play second fiddle to himself and his talented wife-to-be Joyce Godenzi. Set at the tail end of the Vietnam War, Eastern Condors is Hung's abbreviated take on men-on-a-mission movies like The Dirty Dozen or The Wild Geese, with the actor-director playing a taciturn ex-convict so macho that he ends up subordinating Lam Ching-ying's worried looked Lieutenant Colonel.

Long on characters but light on story, Condors tracks a group of ethnically Chinese soldiers who have each been promised $20,000 and American citizenship if they can blow up an abandoned missile stockpile. Avowed genre hopper Hung uses the modern setting to augment his kung-fu repertoire with hand grenades and a machete. Hung has his extended cast thrash about in danger while he quietly sneaks up behind machine-gun posts and carves everybody up.

Yuen Biao comes along for the ride as Weasel, a local black market trader looking for a pay day. There's something refreshing about the use of money as a consistent motivating factor in Hong Kong films. Morals and ideals are all well and good, but why shouldn't our heroes be getting paid? Biao is on typically sublime form, hurling his legs out in perfect, graceful arcs, delivering kicks that look like they could take heads off.

Condors reveals a director obsessed with impact. Sammo Hung can't even shoot a routine climbing insert without dwelling on leather boots clanging down on steel rungs. The pace is relentless, with very few of Hung's trademark digressions. Away from the urban sprawl of Hong Kong, Hung has keyed into the inherent excitement of explosions and assault rifles then focused, taking up the challenge of matching that kineticism with his martial arts.

Hung shoots full-contact, an approach that pays double dividends. First, when the Condors strike their enemies there's a clear moment of collision. Hung employs slow-motion and a tight frame to linger on the details, so when Yuen Biao drive his heel into an opponent's throat it fills up a significant amount of the screen.

Secondly, the Condors tend to travel with their movements. Since they aren't pulling their punches (or kicks) the energy needed to power the attack expires a foot or so behind a skull rather than in front of it. It's a small amendment but it helps give Condors a sense of verisimilitude. Hung's film doesn't look drilled and theatrical, it looks real. There's a palpable, consistent sense of hurt on display.

Yuen Wah's giggling final foe doesn't use his Eagle Claw technique to cover the Condors in photogenic slashes, instead the VC General digs his fingers into Biao's back and attempts to tear the unfortunate merc's shoulder blades off his ribcage. Hung lingers on bodies in distress. Team mates are shredded by heavy artillery and even duplicitous love interests aren't safe from Hung's gleaming cleaver. At rest everyone looks exhausted, sweat pissing out of every pore.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Dragons Forever

Sammo Hung and Corey Yuen steer the Three Brothers cycle to a close with Dragons Forever, a sappy, scrappy entry that sees each of the principal stars acting wildly against type. Hung puts himself front-and-centre with a turn as a soft-hearted arms dealer that allows him to play a chaste romance with older lady, Deannie Yip. This relationship, and a parallel romance for Jackie Chan, forms the meat of Dragons' second-act, muscling out some mounting intrigue surrounding a gang of smack dealers and their New Romantic heavies.

Yuen Biao pops in and out of the film as Tung, a principled inventor prone to psychotic flights of fancy. It's a juvenile, supplementary part very much in the vein of Austin Wai in Fearless Hyena II or an insane version of Biao's own David from Wheels on Meals. As is usually the case, Biao's gymnastic perfection is wasted with a role best described as an recurring plot obstacle. Tung is essentially a malfunctioning robot child, programmed to ruin burgeoning relationships with ill-timed appearances.

As an idea, simple-minded violence maps nicely onto Biao's youthful, underdog persona. Hung and Yuen choose to keep the actor underdeveloped and on the margins though, the bulk of his story on the cutting room floor. Come the finale, the high-kick MVP is fed to the alpha heavy to raise the stakes for a confrontation with Chan. Unfortunately, despite some early promise, Biao's interjections are akin to Jim Varney's Earnest suddenly turning up in the middle of a Rob Reiner film. Tung is an irritant you always feel ill-prepared for.

Jackie Chan's character Lung is the biggest departure of all, a corrupt mob lawyer who's not above cracking uncooperative women across the face. Chan's flirted with sourness before, his roles in the Lucky Stars films had an arrogant, impatient clip to them, but Lung is actually sleazy. Every woman is ogled. According to Bey Logan's commentary, the chartered boat seduction Lung employs to woo Pauline Yeung's character was a proven method for rich businessmen looking to ooze around beauty pageant contestants.

Logan insinuates that Lung's womanising is a lot closer to the real life Jackie Chan than the relentless do-gooder persona Police Story had minted. He also states outright, quoting Sammo Hung, that Chan was the main stumbling block to further Three Brothers films - he just didn't want to make them. Hung had helped resurrect Chan's career after a couple of duds and the star's US misadventures, but by 1988 Jackie Chan had three proven formulas to riff off for sequels. He didn't need his Big Brother anymore.

Perhaps there was a quality issue in play too? Wheels on Meals and Heart of Dragon had delivered but the Lucky Stars films had gotten increasingly ramshackle. Chan's guest spot in Winners & Sinners had evolved into a recurring obligation to prop up an action finale. Chan's involvement also ensured that the films would be an attractive proposition for the Japanese market. With this in mind, it's easy to see a kind of courting going on in how the film's finale is arranged.

Benny Urquidez is back, recruited to play a henchman with a Yuppie haircut and Blitz Kids make-up. His eyebrows are fair against pale skin, he looks singed, like Arnold Schwarzenegger after tackling Reese's improvised car bomb in The Terminator. Urquidez soundly thrashes both Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, paving the way for a feature showdown with Jackie.

Urquidez's demolition of Biao is especially galling. A two-handed assault on a wave of anonymous henchmen saw Biao blow Chan off the screen. Biao is lithe and perfect in his movement. Chan is fine, incredible even, but Dragons Forever thoroughly demolishes the myth that Jackie performs every single one of his stunts. There are at least four obvious instances of the star being doubled in this sequence - two of which utilise slow motion. These moments jar, even more so following some immaculate near misses from Biao.

Dragons Forever is the kind of film that makes you wish that there was more Hong Kong movie gossip floating around in English. Who doesn't want to read about the conflicts and clashing egos? Was Urquidez brought in for a rematch to keep Chan happy? Did Chan sulk after his directors made zero effort to conceal Chin Kar-lok's doubling? Or is it simply a case of incessant injuries finally starting to add up? Jackie Chan had a leading role in twenty films during the 1980s, a punishing workload for any actor, never mind one who routinely broke his bones and ordered Kodak film by the ton.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Heart of Dragon

Co-directors Sammo Hung and Fruit Chan subvert a tearjerker premise by playing it straight, bordering on mean. In Heart of Dragon Jackie Chan is a selfish cop struggling to look after his intellectually disabled older brother. Considering the matinee popularity of Chan and his co-star Sammo Hung, it'd be tempting to assume that the pairing will largely be played for laughs. It isn't. Heart of Dragon might careen headlong into melodrama, but it also isn't afraid to push the actors in unusual directions.

Chan plays Tat Fung, an action figure working as an ancillary member of a Police special forces team who dreams of becoming a merchant seaman. Unfortunately the frustrated Fung is stuck babysitting a mentally challenged adult in an aggressive, hardscrabble borough of Hong Kong. Sammo's Dodo is a towering manchild who hangs out with the local brats and plays with Masters of the Universe toys. Dodo isn't even the smartest member of the gang. The kids have him pegged as a dimwit and exploit him accordingly.

This callousness is everywhere in Heart of Dragon. Every single adult Hung meets feels obliged to bully and take advantage of him. A local job search quickly turns demeaning with Dodo prompted by a cruel restaurant owner to wriggle around on the floor, acting like a succession of animals. It's the flip side of the aspirational Hong Kong lifestyle seen in the Lucky Stars films. These people aren't upwardly mobile, they're stuck and lashing out.

A Japanese exclusive version of the film (entitled The First Mission) accentuates this effect by weaving in two extra fight scenes. Since the confrontations are absent for every other territory, their justification is throwaway and deliberately flimsy. Whereas in most films their inclusion would read as a cynical attempt to keep the audience awake, in Heart of Dragon they're just another angle on this dog-eat-dog world. Action director Yuen Biao matches this hostility with some savage fight set-ups involving submachine guns, machetes and even a pickaxe.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars

Released just six months after the last instalment, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars plumbs new depths in mind-numbing incoherence. Although not all-the-way dreadful (Sammo Hung couldn't fuck up an action scene if his life depended on it), the film still has the stale whiff of contractual obligation about it. Sammo Hung kicks off proceedings by taking a forty minute holiday with an extended cast of hangers-on and lookalikes. That's right, Pepsi fanatic Charlie Chin couldn't even be bothered to stick around for the whole film, sending doppelgänger Michael Miu along to make up the numbers instead.

Despite being the director, and therefore theoretically on-set at all times, Hung's role in this early section is fleeting. Maybe he's bored with the series too? Sammo's character Fast Buck kills time mooning over a disinterested Sibelle Hu then sabotages an elaborate peeping tom routine, all while wearing a chubby-toddler-visits-the-circus outfit. You'd swear it was a cameo. Hung looks tired and disinterested, moving with the exasperated snap of a man who knows he's not putting in his best work. 

Sammo's gang are in Thailand sleazing around a group of girls that aren't involved in the story in any way. Since the third act revolves around babysitting a young actress, couldn't she have been introduced earlier with these women as her entourage? Guess not. Instead Richard Ng takes a course in Thai black magic, focusing on sexual magnetism and makeshift Voodoo dolls.

The ladies play along with Ng's supernatural sex appeal until it's funnier not to. That's it for them, as quickly as they're introduced they're discarded to make way for Rosamund Kwan, Twinkle's feature punching bag. Kwan, like Sibelle Hu before her, is grabbed and groped in punishing comedic set-ups that make the Police Academy series look progressive.

All this drudgery plays counter-intuitive to the aims of ensemble films. If the filmmakers are going to crowd out the plot with cartoon characters you should at least feel like the cast are having fun, even if you're not. There's precious little pleasure on display here. Jackie Chan looks pained and overworked. Kwan has the dead-eyed stare of someone pretending to be game. Stanley Fung looks like he wants to punch someone.

Twinkle still has blips of excitement though. Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao drop in briefly as two cops assigned to sit outside a mob boss' house and pull faces. They're joined by rising star Andy Lau for an exemplary warehouse dust-up in which the trio have to ditch their Police special pistols. Why? The set is dressed with barrels of explosive toxic waste, that's why.

Lau is gifted martial arts abilities through some beautiful editing while Biao once again proves he's the safest hands (legs?) in the business. Shame Hung and pals still refuse to let him display much of a personality. Even sandwiched in amongst the film's best elements, Chan's contribution to Twinkle sticks out like a sore thumb. Although injured and clearly frustrated, the actor is able to convey a level of charm utterly lacking anywhere else in the film.

Twinkle's main problem is that it doesn't have a central idea, or really any ideas. To compensate, the film's heaving with guest stars. A last-minute gag involves the entire Hong Kong film industry stampeding out of a lift. They all look like they're nursing a low-level headache. Before that Michelle Yeoh shows up as a Judo instructor in a sequence constructed around the idea that, if pushed, Sammo is happy to hurl a woman around for an adoring teenybop audience. As well as having his female leads fawn all over him. Hung seems to enjoy busing in physically impressive women only to demolish them in one deft shot. It's a very strange point to keep harping on about, but hey, this is Sammo's world.  

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - My Lucky Stars

A truly bizarre film in which Jackie Chan is trapped in a pocket universe full of action and intrigue while Sammo Hung and pals hang out cracking jokes about gang rape. My Lucky Stars is Hung at his most widely uneven. An opening passage that ends in a Japanese amusement park is an incredible, seat-of-your-pants introduction that takes in muscle car crashing, Chan scrambling up a Ferris wheel, and Yuen Biao being kidnapped by a team of powder blue ninjas.

Hung uses split-focus diopters and Giallo angles to key us into a film and situation that My Lucky Stars isn't particularly interested in. The second Chan's investigation hits a brick wall we're whisked off to Hong Kong for boring mediums and ensemble bullying. As with Winners & Sinners, Hung spends his time in the company of a gang of lecherous convicts. Their target is Sibelle Hu, a rookie policewoman who sullenly complies with extended grab-ass conceits that stop Lucky Stars dead.

Winners suffered from a similar lascivious streak but Lucky Stars takes the drooling somewhere hostile and uncomfortable. Since this is a sequel an appreciative audience is taken for granted, character traits are dialled up into absurdity. Charlie Chin suffers the most. In Winners his character was conceited and pompous, a guy who's funny because he assumes he's dashing and cool. This time out he's just another set of fists to persecute Eric Tsang's whipping boy.

The pervs in Winners were kept in check by a jealous brother and, eventually, Sammo himself. Cherie Chung was in on the joke to a degree too, although she was definitely positioned as a possession. Unfortunately, Sibelle Hu has no-one looking out for her, so it follows she is treated contemptibly. She's never given anything to do and apparently falls in love with Hung moments after being told he wants to rape her. Hu's treated as a punchline, the joke's always on her.

Eventually Hung manages to tear himself away from degrading Ms Hu long enough to stage a virtuoso sequence set in Fuji-Q Highland's endless, neon ghost house. The aggressive mediocrity of the last hour fades away as we track a silent Jackie Chan through a series of violent, supernatural confrontations. Armed with a kodachi sword, a snubnosed revolver and a Fila tracksuit, Chan bops along a set dressed like a head-on collision between Tsui Hark's Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Nobuhiko Obayashi's House.

Chan arrives dressed as Akira Toriyama's Arale-chan, literalizing the shonen appeal felt in Wheels on Meals. In full costume, Chan fends off Samurai in Kabuki make-up, then finds himself pushed down a corridor seething with arcade game hazards. Finally, Chan battles two ghosts in an upside down sitting room. As this is a Sammo Hung film, Chan moves and strikes with an assured lethality. Underlings are run through, axe-murderers are blown away.

It's a wonderful example of action cinema, a moment-to-moment adventure narrative built out of a determined individual pressing deeper and deeper into somewhere illogical. Clashing tones are putty in Hung's hands. We skip merrily from carnival shocks to desperate brawling to silent movie mugging. It's just a shame that this light, expert touch didn't extend to the rest of My Lucky Stars.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Wheels on Meals

Sammo Hung follows up the intermittently wonderful Winners & Sinners with Wheels on Meals, another action packed comedy. Winners was an important film for Hung and his co-star Jackie Chan, it demonstrated that their fight and stunt films could still attract an audience when updated to the modern day. Wheels goes one further, relocating the action from Hong Kong to Spain and setting its stars up against a host of international heavies including martial arts renaissance man Benny Urquidez.

Dramatically, Wheels puts Yuen Biao front and centre. The boyish star plays David, cousin to Jackie Chan's Thomas and co-owner of the pair's fast-food van. There's a sense that Wheels was an attempt by Golden Harvest to push Biao as a leading man. At a purely mechanical level, his desires drive the film. It is David who wants to rescue Lola Forner's Sylvia, a beautiful but charmless pickpocket who may actually be a Countess.

Thomas is a lot less enthusiastic. He'll make an effort if she's around but overall he's reticent to fold her into their little collective. It's an unusual characterisation for Chan, tallying closer to his real-life reputation as a remorseless womaniser than the sexless screen persona forced on him by a jealous, excitable fan base. Even though their relationship remains resolutely chaste, David, in his own bumbling, relentlessly polite way, is the romantic lead. It's a shame Wheels doesn't push Biao a little further.

Often pigeonholed as the perennial little brother, Yuen Biao's raw physicality and speed lend him an almost psychotic edge. He's just far too efficient. Whereas Chan and Hung brawl with the best of them, Biao zaps through the frame steamrolling grunts. This precision coupled with Peter Cheung Yiu-chung's crisp editing means Biao's incidental confrontations are always brutally swift, a quality that seems slightly at odds with his spaced out character. Although this is by no means a deal-breaker, it'd be interesting to see Biao's characters reflect the actor's lithe intensity.

Besides some comedic dithering in the first hour Wheels is a finely crafted film, light years ahead of similar attempts by Hong Kong directors to deliver an international product. Bruce Lee's cross-continental Way of the Dragon in particular looks primitive and mannered in comparison. The Three Brothers' star power ensures Wheels is a moneyed, professional production,

Director Sammo Hung injects even the most rudimentary movement with a sense of energy and purpose. Hung also attracts the best talent. A rugged car chase was arranged by Blackie Ko, a legendary figure in Hong Kong automotive stunts. Biao and Chan are on career best form, everyone's firing on all cylinders. Barcelona isn't just used for brisk establishing shots either. Hung stages his action in and around the beautiful Antoni Gaudi architecture, giving the film the same kind of globetrotting verisimilitude the better Bonds enjoy.

I get the impression that Wheels on Meals was an important film for Japanese audiences in particular. Perhaps it was helped along by a plot that shares similarities with Hayao Miyazaki's The Castle of Cagliostro? Chan himself was a massive star in Japan at this point, attracting a possessive, idol level of attention from his female fans. Chan, it seems, is perfectly suited to this market. As well as being able to package himself as a cute but masculine boy next door for the girls, he's also the living embodiment of the friends-and-training ethos that drives most shonen manga.

The influence of Hung's film isn't limited to Jackie Chan either, there's an aesthetic fallout too. Similar to how the visual tics and tricks of Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture were reinterpreted and regurgitated by 1980s sci-fi anime, traces of Wheels on Meals keep showing up in video games, especially early combat coin-ops. Most obviously there's Irem's Kung-Fu Master, released as a Wheels tie-in in Japan under the film's Spartan X rebranding.

Capcom seem to have been paying attention too. Aside from reconfiguring the Evil Count character into their Matador fighter Vega (Balrog if you're Japanese), you can see the film's insert action in how combos are communicated in the Street Fighter II games - that glimpse of limbs already at their destination, movement implied through where the arms and legs are not rather than any specific motion. The interior of the Count's castle has a decor that will echo across the Resident Evil series too, in particular the two Shinji Mikami entries.

What keeps Wheels on Meals memorable for most audiences is the closing fight between Chan and Urquidez. The two are evenly matched, twice mirroring each other with some groundwork that looks like a dropkicking Cossack dance. Urquidez is the perfect opponent for Jackie Chan. He's of a similar height and build, his real-life martial arts credentials (Black Belts in Judo, Jujutsu, Karate, Kajukenbo, Kendo and Kickboxing) feeding into the idea that Chan's films are a hairsbreadth away from full-contact reality.

As this is a Sammo Hung film the violence scales with the stakes. Whereas before we've had head-to-heads that are broadly comedic, the last couple of clashes feature some serious bodily harm. One sequence involving Chan cracking a prone bodyguard across the jaw with a baseball bat is shocking not just for the sheer remorselessness of the strike but for the blood splatter it produces. Thirty minutes ago Thomas was sucking lollipops and pouting like a child.

Head trauma is a recurring theme in Wheels. When he finally has Urquidez on the ropes, Chan hammers at his opponents face, frantically trying to put him down. The blows come in slow motion and look stiff, designed to harm. Urquidez's cheeks are puffed up and swollen. There's palpable desperation in how Chan approaches Urquidez, he can't outfight him so he has to knock him unconscious. Chan even resorts to a cheap chair shot at one point.

The film runs with this idea, focusing every decisive blow around Urquidez's head, even going so far as to have him stumbling around no longer in control of his legs. Brain damage wasn't an unforeseen development, it was the intent. As an outcome this escalation in violence is emblematic of the moment-to-moment pragmatism at work in Hong Kong cinema. Sammo Hung's heroes don't rise above homicidal violence, they match it.

Wheels on Meals confirms a lot of what I suspected watching Winners & Sinners, Sammo Hung is able to tap into Jackie Chan and his abilities in a way no-one else can. Hung, it seems, has an instinctual knowledge of his Peking Opera cohort and is able to push him further to deliver something extra special. It's easy to see why Chan might feel he's in safe hands. Hung's action is clear and sympathetic, perfectly capturing the risk his stars have taken. Any ego or conflict that might exist between the three former classmates is firmly behind the camera. Each of the trio consistently get to look absolutely amazing. Biao throws perfect shapes with his legs, Hung moves around like a man half his size and Chan looks like a God in a forearm bruiser for the ages.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Project A

Project A was something of a return to form for Jackie Chan, the star had been knocked around for years both figuratively and literally. An organised crime prompted flight to America had been a dead end and Hong Kong produced films like Dragon Lord had gone monstrously over budget while under-delivering financially. With this in mind Project A plays like a concerted effort to address the problems the star had faced. Most obviously, the film has a clear narrative push with characters and situations that develop in concert with the action.

As well as writing and directing, Chan plays Sergeant Dragon, a high-ranking member of the embattled Hong Kong Marine Police. Aside from a strong interservice rivalry with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, the organisation faces opposition from both pirates and the wheezy bureaucrats who want to slash their funding. Project A frames this basic tension with an idea of self-determination, Chan representing the bright, young Hong Kong citizens who not only want to seize power for themselves but wield it effectively. Chan is surging, youthful energy butting heads with ancient colonial blowhards.

Project A is the first instance that I've seen of this kind of instructive bent in Chan's films. The Jackie Chan persona is maturing, he's no longer the directionless but talented youth, he's a pillar of the community. The evolution of character also coincides with a new approach to action and violence,

Chan dodges danger and fights out of a sense of civic pride. Perhaps Chan's brush with the Triads not only altered the trajectory of his career but how he came to consider his role as a star. From this point onwards Jackie Chan becomes synonymous with law enforcement, his fighting skills used for self-defence rather than self-promotion.

For his big comeback, Chan surrounded himself with the cream of Hong Kong action talent. As well as a first outing for the official Jackie Chan Stunt Team, fellow Peking Opera classmates Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung appear as allies from both sides of the law. Once again Chan and Hung fight alongside each other, but unlike Winners & Sinners this setpiece is more about how the two performers are able to build off individual movements and compliment each other. Hung's film showcased their ability to dole out world class bumps, Chan focuses on a sense of grace and precision.

Project A isn't really a fight film though, confrontations are exciting but rarely the destination. A fatal four way between Chan, Hung, Biao, and Dick Wei's Pirate King sees the three brothers completely outclassed. All Chan and Biao can do is delay a cutlass wielding Wei long enough for Hung to lumber up and deliver a 20 stone drop kick. Although humorous the fight has a sense of desperation to it, Biao and Chan have to work like hell to avoid being killed.

Chan instead makes stunts Project A's focus, riffing on the death-defying antics of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Chan shares the same comedic instincts as those silent film stars. He'll caper, even feign a scrambling, imprecise kind of incompetence to put himself in danger. He's also content to be vulnerable, we're not sure if he's actually going to succeed. Keaton waltzes through peril like Roadrunner, innocent and essentially immune. Jackie Chan is more of a Wile E Coyote figure. He gets harmed.

I can't help but feel that Chan's rough and tumble approach is also informed by Vic Armstrong's work on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg's film gives us extended glimpses of a man out of his depth, struggling to shuffle his bones around weighty Nazi machinery. Chan goes one further by being both the action actor and the stunt performer simultaneously. Although clearly adept we are given just enough rope to worry as, crucially, Chan never presents himself as invincible. There's always a price for our entertainment. We track with his falls, watch his body upend and bounce like a rag doll, then dash in to see him dazed and dragged up onto his feet. All in one take.

Jackie Chan in the 1980s - Winners & Sinners

Winners & Sinners is what happens when several of the world's greatest action directors decide to make their own, culturally specific version of The Blues Brothers or, maybe more accurately, the Carry On films. Briefly, Winners & Sinners is a broad, chummy comedy revolving around the misadventures of a team of criminals determined to go straight after a lengthy spell in prison.

Hung's recruits include Stanley Fung as Rookie, the secretive straight man; John Sham as Curly, a political activist for hire who fumes every time one of his pals sleazes around his sister Shirley (Cherie Chung); Charlie Chan as Vaseline, a self-appointed lothario; and Richard Ng as Exhaust Pipe, a gadget loving thief who's convinced he can make himself invisible. Hung himself stars as Teapot, the group whipping boy who ends up winning Shirley's affections by playing it modest. Jackie Chan cameos as an overenthusiastic cop who's down for casual brutality.

Primarily a comedy, Winners & Sinners is a series of rambling vignettes with occasional action interludes. Unlike many Hong Kong films that attempt to juggle these two clashing tones, Hung's film largely hangs together thanks to a relentlessly energetic pace. The cast, especially Richard Ng, are funny. One sight gag involving voluminous smoke from one of Sammo's trick cigars is inspired.

Hung's setpieces are exciting and dangerous looking. An umpteen vehicle pileup caused by Chan's dogged pursuit of two pickpockets gets very close to John Landis levels of destruction. Hung and action co-director Yuen Biao continuously find new angles on two (or three, or four) bodies interacting, editor Peter Yiu-Chung Cheung making superb use of the absolutely exhaustive coverage.

Of particular note is a forty second exchange in a starkly lit food hall that instantly seems like one of the most exciting uses of montage I've ever seen. It's just so fast. Each shot carefully composed to deliver an almost subliminal glimpse of the action without ever losing the geographical whole, or derailing the hammering rhythm. The sequence even caters for the styles of the two star fighters. Sammo Hung gets to deliver concise devastation blows while Chan moves in and around a stick-up crew attempting to flee.

In many ways the confrontation flies in the face of traditional fight theory. Wides are seldom held, the cuts are very fast, at first glance it almost seems like the excitement has been constructed in editing. Look at the arrangement over and over again though and you start to see that everything has been repeated a great many times from a wide selection of angles, each consistent enough to build a spatially cohesive whole.

I took an ungodly amount of screencaps during this fight, so let's run it down.

Jackie Chan hurls himself in from the left, leapfrogging a goon or two to deliver a kick hard enough to send Vest Top hurtling towards the wall in front of him. Stash Man tracks alongside the group.

A lower angle on Chan using one of his catapult people as a human shield. Camouflage's arm looks like it's twelve foot long. Vest Top winces up against the wall. Stash Man starts to cower.

Chan and the human gymnastic equipment. Chan uses the momentum of the crumbling man to launch a kick at the Camouflage Goon. Vest Top has fully sunk to the floor across these two shots - another layer of movement. Stash Man has gone into a full dither.

A lightning fast shot of Chan accounting for the Blue Goon on his right, then pushing off to deliver a knock down strike to Camouflage Man. Chan instantly changes tact to kick another Goon trying his luck. Note the angle is lower again, making us perceive Chan's legs as longer.

Continuous on the same set-up - Camouflage Man hurtles towards the screen as Chan lines up his kick at a White Vest Attacker. Chan tucks his leg up then throws it out again to meet the incoming attacker. These two planes of movement meet with a crunch. White Vest is stopped dead in his tracks rather than being sent back the way he came.

Pushing off from the pause strike to White Vest, Chan angles his leg up to the Blue Goon on his left, the close-up of the impact matching the position of the leg in the previous shot. Just when you think he must be finished Chan flings his leg out again to hammer White Vest in the face and put him on his back. It's superfluous, excessive, and utterly thrilling.

While Chan struggles with two head-locked Goons, a New Challenger appears - Knife Guy! Please note Sammo Hung crawling around in the background, still stunned from Chan's initial, explosive launch towards the gang.

Before Knife Guy can make any significant gains Chan has him trapped with his Adidas Casuals. The next shot reveals Chan is again using his Blue Goons as leverage, allowing him to push Knife Guy directly into the path of Sammo Hung, effectively tagging his co-star into the fight.

The section I've highlighted lasts maybe twelve seconds, making up just under a quarter of this complete sequence. Straight after Sammo Hung gets his chance to shine, his set-ups are longer and arranged to accentuate the impact of his famously stiff blows. This bodily harm is intercut with Chan snaking around his flailing opponents delivering double groin punches, shot from his character's POV.

If it's ever talked about seriously, Winners & Sinners is usually discussed in terms of how it took Hung and Chan out of period brawlers and into a more contemporary milieu. What I'm wondering though is where did this particular style of shooting come from? Is this the first instance?

A lot of the Sammo Hung films I'm familiar with - Magnificent Butcher and his additional footage in the Chinese cut of Game of Death - were still using long, traditional choreography with an emphasis on limbs cracking against each other. 1981's The Prodigal Son, directed by Hung and starring Yuen Biao, does contain a few exchanges with a similar kind of editing beat but nothing this complicated, claustrophobic or experimental.

Up until now Jackie Chan had matched Hung's bone splintering with his own unbeatable underdog. This was a mutation that saw Chan putting his stunt skills to the test, barrelling through teams of heavies and desperately selling for his final opponent. Chan is always communicating a steep climb. Considering this excerpt relies pretty heavily on call-and-response actions between a team of stunt men, and given that Jackie Chan is happy to slum as a component in his own fight scenes, perhaps he is the primary architect?

It's worth noting that the scene has elements in common with the bathroom fight in Walter Hill's The Warriors, both scenes sharing a similar kinetic punctuation. We're no longer dealing with well-trained experts, these people are more like street fighters, so it makes sense to take a different approach. Is this Chan's take on those kind of ideas? Hill and his editors compiled their fight like an explosion, hurling shrapnel in every direction. Chan and his team instead have every element tracking back towards him - the centre. A deliberately chaotic brawl is reduced down to one determined individual managing and responding to assaults from several different directions.

Most likely of all, Chan, Hung and Biao were goading each other on, pushing themselves to deliver their best possible work. After a string of duds and failures, Jackie Chan must've been especially hungry. Take a glance at the respective filmographies and it feels like there was an arms race going on between the former school friends, each of the stars working like crazy to take fight films somewhere different. Although I'm by no means an expert this short exchange in a strip-lit mall, deep in a crude comedy, strikes me as something new and precious.