Vanguard [15]

Dir: Stanley Tong

Vanguard is a personal protection agency run by Tang Huating (Jackie Chan). Their client Qin Guoli (Jackson Lou) and his daughter Fareeda (Ruohan Xu) have been kidnapped by Omar (Eyad Hourani), the son of an arms dealer that Qin had previously worked with. Tang and his young team of mercenaries must rescue Qin and Fareeda.

Jackie Chan is a workhorse. This year, as he turns 67, it will be 60 years since he entered Yu Jim Yuen’s chinese opera school, where much of the greatest generation of martial arts actors and directors was forged. For the last 50 years Chan has been making film after film, and since the release of Drunken Master in 1978 he has been essentially uncontested as the biggest star in Asian action cinema. In that time he’s broken just about every bone in his body doing stunts. He has a permanent hole in his head from one that very nearly killed him. In short, you can forgive him for appearing tired.

The last twenty years or so haven’t been the greatest time to be a Jackie Chan fan. There might be the occasional flash of inspiration (among them the rollerskate suit in Chinese Zodiac; creditable dramatic performances in the remake of The Karate Kid and The Foreigner, and the overall surprisingly solid Railroad Tigers) but even the films that have a couple of great moments can be a chore to plod through. It’s also been clear for a while that he’s been using doubles more and had greater CGI assists. Combine all that with the fact that plot, acting and character have never been his strong suits as a filmmaker, and you get the recipe for garbage like Kung Fu Yoga and Bleeding Steel.

There is some promise to Vanguard. Firstly, it reunites Jackie with Stanley Tong, who directed Police Story 3 and First Strike, as well as Rumble in the Bronx (and, ahem, Kung Fu Yoga). Secondly, it appears that Chan has begun to recognise some of his limitations. He’s billed first here of course, but largely takes a supporting role and cedes the spotlight to a younger team of Yang Yang, Lun Ai and Miya Muqi as some of Vanguard’s best protection officers. Initially, this seems like a decent idea, but whether it’s the perfunctory writing (the bromance between Yang Yang and Lun Ai is very forced) or Tong’s direction, none of the younger leads makes much of an impact. The screenplay here doesn't give them much to work with, but the essential thing they lack is anything unique about any of their screen presence, something Jackie always had in spades. None of them establish much personality, neither do they particularly stand out in the action sequences. Unfortunately, Chan can’t save the film on this score, never the most gifted actor, he’s got a poorly defined character and gives little expression to any of his dialogue, while also spending most of his time in the action sequences very much in the background, firing a gun. We probably see less than a minute of actual martial arts technique from him, perhaps half of that in the foreground of the frame.

In their first three collaborations, Stanley Tong brought out the best in Jackie. It may have been that, having directed many of his own films between the late 70s and early 90s, Chan was taking a stronger hand behind the camera, but Tong’s style both in shooting and editing seemed a perfect match for his star. Whether it’s because he remains in thrall to what is becoming an outdated action style or because he is trying to hide limitations in his cast, Tong opts for a choppier style of action here; not full Bourne perhaps, but certainly much shakier and faster cut than his work used to be. This is the worst possible decision because Jackie’s action is uniquely his own style, and in Vanguard it looks like it could come out of any other action film. There’s not even a signature stunt, though a gag excusing that is one of the film’s only proper laughs. Add woeful CGI (the lion) and green screen work, and you’ve got a film that fails on a lot of technical levels.

Vanguard isn’t Jackie Chan’s worst film, but it’s another sign that his place in the future is probably behind the camera. I would love to see him bring his old style and rhythm to films starring a new generation of action actors, but if that’s what Vanguard was going for, it’s a dismal failure.

★ 

Martial Arts Monday: Armour of God 2: Operation Condor

Dir: Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan has never shied away from using other filmmakers work as inspiration, indeed his entire persona is heavily influenced by silent comedians, to the degree that he has paid direct homage to stunts by Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, among others. The Armour of God series is his riff on Indiana Jones. This second entry (confusingly released in the US simply as Operation Condor, with Armour of God later released as Operation Condor 2), whether by design or accident, sticks most closely to the template laid out by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

In typical Indy fashion, the film begins with what feels like the end of an adventure we didn’t see. In this case, Jackie (as the character is called in the restored extended version I watched for this) is taking gems from a cave but is attacked by the tribe that lives there when he drinks the holy water. It’s all a lot of nonsense to lead into a pretty spectacular sequence of the character zorbing down a cliff and sets the tone pretty well.

At 117 minutes in this cut (extended from 107 in the original Hong Kong release, and just 80 minutes in its US version), Operation Condor takes a while to set up its story, which eventually finds Jackie sent to locate Nazi gold buried in the Sahara desert with three women (Eva Cobo, Carol ‘DoDo’ Cheng and Shôko Ikeda) in tow, who all have some connection either to the hunt or to the people who stole the gold. Aside from the set pieces (an exceptional car and bike chase and a slapstick break in and fight at Cobo’s house), the first hour of the film is a slog, especially because Chan and co-writer Edward Tang, in their cribbing from Spielberg, have decided to give all three of the female co-stars the Willie Scott role. This means that rather than just one perma-screaming damsel in endless distress we have an entire chorus of them. Along with the several times that their (mostly implied) nudity is used as a distraction in fights and the amount of times each of them gets hit, it all feels pretty retrograde, as do the racial politics, with a bunch of white stuntmen playing mujahideen fighters (better that though than putting them in brownface).

What keeps the whole thing afloat during the first two acts is twofold. First, there are just about enough setpieces to paper over the cracks and secondly, when those moments come, Chan attacks them with all his customary energy and precision. Operation Condor took 18 months to make and was the most expensive film made in Hong Kong up to that time and Jackie and co-director Frankie Chan put it all up on screen. The mid-film set piece that ranges all across the desert hotel where Jackie and the women are staying is a highlight, with agile and funny martial arts mixing with stunt work and an epic amount of squibs laying waste to the set when Eva Cobo fires a machine gun she can’t control.

As a fan of martial arts cinema, I always know broadly that what we’re waiting for is the last act of the movie. The action beats up until then are all well and good, but it’s all prologue. This being a long film, Jackie and his stunt team have a lot saved up for what is a roughly half-hour finale that moves from fight to fight, from overblown set to overblown set, and from stunt to stunt with breathless energy. Once we get to the base where the gold is held, the film is on rails (much like Temple of Doom when it finally gets to its own underground finale). Happily, he finally throws his leading ladies (all of whom, annoying though their characters can be, are very game and look like they’re having a great time), allowing them some inventiveness in a great little comic action beat. 

Operation Condor came in the middle of an all but unprecedented 18 year run between The Young Master and Who Am I in which, at least in the Hong Kong films he was top-billed in, Jackie barely put a foot wrong—figuratively speaking. It’s in this last half hour that this film finally kicks fully into gear to stand alongside exalted company like the Police Story and Project A films. The fight that runs through the first room in the base, with Jackie winding his way through railings and into and out of vents as he fights, is reminiscent, at a time when they had fallen out, of Sammo Hung’s masterful Eastern Condors. Jackie, if never as hard-hitting as his bigger brother, inevitably goes bigger. First there is a fight across two massive seesawing platforms, and then the grand finale in a wind tunnel. This sequence is everything Jackie Chan does well: it is grandiose in its silliness, but also allows him to play to all of his physical comedy strengths as well as achieve some unique action beats. 

This sequence, along with the end of first act chase and the last half hour as a whole, are where Operation Condor best captures the sheer joy of watching Jackie Chan work at his best. The film as a whole may be inconsistent, but in its best moments it soars like Jackie as he uses the turbine to fly at an opponent, gleefully yelling “Superman”.

★★★½