JACKIE CHAN'S FIRST STRIKE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Heavy on action, light on thought,
this is a film that easily matches the stunts of a
James Bond film but delivers little else. The plot
is mostly an excuse for action scenes and is a
contrivance to which the script gives only cursory
attention. Chan has the personality to make much
more engaging films. Still, only he can do stunts
like this without a stand-in. Rating: high 0 (-4
to +4)
The Hong-Kong-based Jackie Chan has been making a rather free-form series of crime films which are best known as his POLICE STORY films. Depending on how you count them, FIRST STRIKE is either the fourth or fifth film in this series. It is probably the fourth, but another film, PROJECT S, was released as if it were part of the POLICE STORY series and called by alternate titles that include POLICE STORY 4 and SUPERCOP 2. That almost makes sense because SUPERCOP was an alternate title of POLICE STORY 3. In general, the more titles a film can be given the more people who will see it a second time not realizing they have seen it before. In any case, this time around Chan is departing from the police motif and making a sort of poor man's James Bond film. And he has the action scenes down pretty well. In fact, his film has better stunts than most Bond films. The only problem is that at a time when the James Bond plots are deteriorating, they are still better and much more complex than a Chan plot. Chan's film is little more than an excuse to string together a series of admittedly pretty exciting action scenes. One has the distinct feeling that the stunts are planned first, then a plot is written to connect the stunts. Not that Chan is not a wonder to watch. When Chan gets going he is a marvel of grace and at times his stunts are difficult to believe. But while this film tries to be like a Bond film--not all that ambitious a goal, particularly of late--FIRST STRIKE is less like a spy film than it is like a collection of circus acts.
It would almost be a mistake to say that FIRST STRIKE has a plot. Basically there is just enough so that Chan can get into a series of fights. Jackie (played by Jackie Chan for the first time under something approaching his own name) has performed well in a mission for the CIA and they have decided to ask him to go on another mission almost as a perk. Jackie is to fly from Hong Kong to Ukraine, just watching a beautiful woman whom the CIA is following. Once he gets to the far end he can have a short vacation at the expense of the CIA. But at the far end he finds there is more involved in the case than he expected when he sees what appears to be a kidnapping. Soon Chan is chasing through snow pursued by soldiers in white parkas and what looks like white hockey masks. Not long after he is fighting muscle-bound assassins proportioned like TV's The Tick. There are a few complications in the plot, a few silly comedy situations, and a few fights using props at hand. While the centerpiece of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX was a fight involving a grocery basket, this time he does considerably more with a folding ladder.
What Chan is making are not films in the traditional sense. Instead he is showing off for the camera, taking risks that probably no other actor making films today would dare. And Chan makes no secret of the fact that a lot of times things go awry as he is filming and he goes through a lot of physical pain to create the stunts he is showing us. More frequently than most other actors would tolerate, things go very wrong and he comes near to physical injury. When he jumps off a cliff and grabs for the skid of a helicopter I think we know that it is probably not a real cliff, but also that there is a real physical danger to Chan to even shoot the scene. We watch him with a fascination that is almost perverse as he takes one dangerous risk after another and that is the real soul of his films, knowing we are seeing real danger. And so nobody doubts that Chan is taking real risks, he includes his out-takes collection at the end to prove how close he really came near to serious injuries. In what plot there is, the characters other than Chan become props almost as much as the inanimate objects around which he flows. Nobody does much acting in one of his films and Chan does little but a little mugging for the camera. Chan is the only character who has a chance to be a character and he does not take that acting part of his work seriously.
FIRST STRIKE--there is no explanation of the title of the film, by the way--is a lampoon of a Bond film and J. Peter Robinson plays along at times giving us imitation John Barry music, but something short of the real thing. Chan has some comic talent and appears to enjoy living dangerously. But most of what it would take to make this film really tick is still missing. I rate FIRST STRIKE a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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