The Man Is Chan
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 6:30PM By Salim Garami
What's good?
I just wanted to tie up our celebration of Jackie Chan's quintessential Police Story and Police Story 2 finding their way into the esteemed catalog of the Criterion Collection by recognizing the other thing he's best known for besides kicking fools in the face: pre-emptively auditioning for the Jackass crew by partaking in some of the most dangerous stunts recorded on film. Safety is for mere mortals as far as Chan is concerned and he is probably convinced that if any characters are ever killed on-screen in a movie, then the actor themself must also be killed for versimilitude.
Not really, but much like his fight choreography, the sort of discipline and ambition Chan displays on screen in order to wow audiences around the world is the kind that pays off a lifetime of painful falls and crashes. He mirrors his own character's resilience to obstacles and defies fear and death with his stuntwork.
Let's get that listing over with so we can watch some more Jackie Chan.
PART 2 - The Five Stunts
5. Eating Hot Peppers - Project A Part 2 (1987)
You know the funny thing about movies? You can't smell them. You can't taste them. That's kind of why something like Leonardo DiCaprio eating an uncooked bison liver doesn't matter to viewers for realness, that's not a sensation that the actor can transmit to the audience directly. So when Dragon decided to eat hot peppers and spit the juice onto his hands so he can gain the upper hand against his opponents, Chan deciding to do that for real feels like he's just hurting himself for the sake of it.
Oh well, it was something worth putting on her to tease him with.
4. BASE jumping onto a Hot Air Balloon - Armour of God (1986)
Y'know, when Tom Cruise jumps off a cargo plane in Mission: Impossible - Fallout, he has gets to land on solid ground (I mean, a building but still). When Chan does it, he has to aim for the hot air balloon floating away and can't really do it at his own leisure when the cliff behind him is exploding off the fact of Earth. But I'm sure it was just a lucky shot.
3. Hanging off a helicopter in Kuala Lumpur - Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)
Really want to take advantage of that location shooting budget? Get a nice helicopter tour of the city. Oh, there's no seat available for Jackie? That's fine he can catch a ride by hanging on a wobbly rope ladder from it, no risk of running into buildings or landmarks or billboards. Oh he's going to run into them anyway? Well, you know, the heart wants what the heart wants and the heart wants to go under arrest from those angles where we see Jackie swinging about at the mercy of the winds for several insane minutes. The guy is hanging upside down by his legs at one point! How is he taking such a dangerous stunt and making it even more deadly for him just for the opportunity to be a clown?
2. Slide - Who Am I? (1998)
Speaking of taking a dangerous stunt and risking injury to continue being a clown, this stunt takes that to heart. Jackie's stunt already looks wildly bad for his health as he slides down the side of a building with no crash pad or safety net to protect him, but the decision to continuously interrupt himself mid-slide to spin and tumble with as little control over his trajectory on a clearly narrowing surface just tells me to ask his opinion on self-preservation. And oh my god, this man is literally standing up in the middle of the slide and then falling face forward.
1. Electric Slide - Police Story (1985)
You already saw it on the previous post as the finale to one of the best fights in cinema history, but I think it is worth acknowledging as its own piece of brilliance. It is exactly the scene I think of first when I think of Jackie Chan: the daring, the scale, the momentum, all of it. It looks and sounds like the most painful thing, imagining the sort of burns you're enduring by sliding fast down a tall height and also hitting every single possible lightbulb around you hard enough to explode. But I also imagine it is just the most exhilarating thing to be in the middle of: a superfast dive in the middle of a shining glass mall as the world explodes into sparks all around you. In all honesty, I think this is exactly the sort of stunt that I need to be told "Don't try this at home, kids" for because it's the coolest looking thing. Maybe it can just be the way I die.
Anyway, I think in addition to celebrating the face of Hong Kong action comedy, I've possibly illustrated how crazy the man is and this is only five of his stunts. He has oh so much bodily injury to proudly present to us and a whole history's worth of action comedy films for us to witness them in.
Anyway, what's your favorite Jackie Chan stunts? Any that you're personally surprised haven't killed him? Would you take safety advice from Jackie? What kind of impact do you think he's brought into the world of action cinema? Let us know in the comments!
Reader Comments (3)
That stunt in the first Police Story is insane. I'm always in awe in what he does. I also love that slide in Who Am I?.
Tom Cruise is a pussy compared to Chan.
There was that stunt in Armor of God that almost killed him, and it wasn't even the jump onto the hot air balloon. He was supposed to jump onto a tree. During one of the takes the tree branch broke, and he fell and banged his head against the rock, cracking his skull. Thank goodness he survived, and he even included the footage of the accident in the end credits. Whatever doesn't kill you...
Not a stunt, but for me the fight scene in First Strike where he first uses a table, then a scaffolding, a chinese mask and finally a ladder, rivals anything in silent cinema.