Who Am I?
Review
Format: English VHS
Stars: Jackie Chan, Ron Smoorenburg, Kwan Yeung

Jackie plays the role of Jackie, which shouldn't be done anymore because everyone in the world knows "Jackie", and he could use another name for once. Jackie loses his memory in the jungle somewhere in Africa after falling from a plane after a mission. Who really cares about the plot anyways, this page is about stunts and fight choreography, so I'll cut to that.

Even though this movie is touted to have some great action, I don't agree. The first time I saw it I was bored until the end fight, which I watch now and laugh. Most of the movie has Jackie dealing with foreigners, in Holland I believe. What does that mean? Re-Dubbing. I hate this. Re-Dubbing, to me, is as bad as BAD ACTING. They shouldn't do this. They should have them either speak MORE LOUDLY, or LEARN ENGLISH (or just use the damn subtitles in the first place). So, sometimes a person says something, their lips move one way, the words move the other. It doesn't work. I hate that.

Anyways, I said I'd talk about the action. There isn't much, really. In the beginning, perhaps, is the most entertaining point in the movie, WHICH WAS CUT SHORT!!!!!!! Jackie was supposed to ride an Elephant or something, and they cut the whole scene out. And they wonder why these movies don't make it as big as stupid American movies. At least American movies don't have the entertaining material removed before release. This is crap, I hate it when they do this stuff. Anyways, Jackie does get to do some tree climbing, fixes a jeep using some handywork, and some other stuff, within maybe 2 minutes. Then he drives the jeep away, which was silly because, 1. He was perfectly happy living in an African tribe for however long he had been there, and then he's totally willing to drive off, and stay away too, and 2. he has amnesia anyways, so what's his problem? He's probably under the impression, at that point, that he belongs to that tribe. Silly. They do this BAM - FLASH - BAM story-action crap that totally fails and completely screws the storyline.

And people are so dumb in this movie too. The Japanese rally racer, in the beginning, asks Jackie questions in English, to which he responds to with nodds or shaking his head, and then she asks him if he understands English, and he nodds. But he put some numbing plant in his mouth so his mouth is numb, and he can't speak clearly, so she thinks he can't understand English, and she tries speaking French with him, thinking he can speak French, BUT ONLY UNDERSTAND ENGLISH!? WHAT'S SHE THINKING? This movie is appeals to audiences who don't give a damn and think, "Oh, whatever" when stuff like this happens.

So, then there's a car chase. I liked it for 1 reason: They used a Mitsubishi (no surprise) Evolution IV. And there were some BMWs there too. However, this scene was tainted with bad action work. First off, the Mitsubishi spins out in gravel, which is supposed to prevent 4 or 5 guys from even getting close to it. THEN, they get sideways (on the ground), spin around, get up, and both sides have nice paint jobs, again. Crap, utterly. And the stunt driver can be seen clearly at times, and it's a guy too. They could have hired a woman stunt driver, OR PUT A WIG ON THE MAN DRIVING TO MAKE IT LOOK REAL. Plus, when doing a donut, they use the car to hit guys, who are standing. That's stupid prop work. Lastly, some of this scene was sped up, which means incompetence in making a car look like it's driving quickly. I guess it's just a cheap way to look good. It makes me think of steroids being widely accepted some day instead of long and hard, tedious workouts to build muscle.

After that Jackie is taken into a room where he's about to be interrogated, hopefully killed by some henchmen who forgot to finish him off earlier. But he gets away, and does something cool. He is handcuffed from behind, and jumps over the handcuffs, something I've seen before though. But he does a really good and original stunt imediately afterwords where he wraps a cord around himself from a high place, attaches the end of the cord to a railing, and rolls down to the ground. How they did this I don't know. I doubt it's real, but then again he's known for doing this stuff.

Fights are almost non-existant. There's one where he fights some whities, but whenever there's action done they, as always, bring in an Asian to do that, and sometimes you can't tell so obviously because the guy would be facing the other way and they could put a wig or something on him to make him look like the real white actor, but here they show them face on, and it's stupid. They assume that you won't pay attention to ANYTHING except Jackie, and hopefully miss the white guy who turned Chinese 10 feet behind Jackie when the camera changed views. In this fight the only good part, which is fast, is shot from 4 miles overhead so you can't see anything except some ants moving around (one of which is Jackie, whichever one that is). He does get a small good moment (which is pretty funny too) where he picks up some cloggs and wears them because he doesn't have any shoes, and fights with them. And he throws one up, spins, and kicks it right into a guy's stomach too. I guess this took some good timing and patience on his part. I like that scene.

The last fight, which I once thought was really good, isn't actually that good. Kwan Yeung (who's also in Black Mask in a short part, he's the one who picks up the phone and it explodes, and he's also one of Emil Chow's members in Gorgeous) fights first. He has some interesting moves at first, but they CAN'T flow together the way they're set up. His arms fly all over the place, and it looks fake. I think Sam Wong (looks like his haircut and head, he's the one who fought Jackie in the beginning of Supercop and also fought Michelle Yeoh in Supercop 2, oddly... good guy to bad guy in a sequel without any story behind the guy) doubled for him, and I've looked on Project J for confirmation, and he seems to think the same, and it's obvious. I could tell the first time I looked, "That's a double". I also noticed the choreography change DRAMATICALLY. It got fast, more elbows and forearms than entire arms like Kwan Yeung, and it looked good. But it's momentary. Very short, happens maybe twice. Then Smoorenburg comes in. The guy has potential, but the first few moments of his scene are doubled too by Brad Allen, I've heard. That's the good part, too, which isn't good news. Smoorenburg is a robot, a choreographed robot. Every movement he makes looks planned. All his punches go for Jackie's blocks, not body. That's not how fight choreography should be performed. Too bad, Smoorenburg could have made an awesome impression here cause the guy can extend pretty well. The beginning of the fight is the highlight of the choreography. Jackie falls onto the very edge of the building a few times, which is good since it didn't seem as though he had any wires or support. Good stuff there. And at the end, he slides down the side of a slanted building. Very good work there too.

Some humor here and there, but the movie tries to be serious so the humor doesn't last. I feel like this movie was another Blacksheep Affair. It tried too hard to be NEW and HOLLYWOOD-like, and it failed. It put in cinematic music like Blacksheep Affair (though not as good, and it had maybe 3 pieces written instead of BSA's 12 or whatever). The acting was horrid from everyone (except Jackie's, which was good as it usually is, he's a natural on the screen even in crap movies like this one, you can't help but like him) and made me gag, especially from the guy who wears all white and acts tough but doesn't do anything except run around, yell at people and point his gun at their faces for a second, and the old man was too sneaky and sly to be real. The reporter girl wasn't a good actor either and tried too hard. The ending scene is rediculous. Boats, helicopters, you name it, all over the place, to catch the old man. And then (I'll put this clip up, I promise) they show the boats underneath the bridge, and they're going in opposite directions along the river, one goes one way, the next goes the other way, and it goes on, 3 more times. It's stupid, and means nothing.

Who Am I? worries me. HK action looks to be turning into crap (for the most part) lately. Is this what's going to happen to it all? What's going to happen to fights that SHOWED you something? When someone threw a punch it had a meaning behind it, either to block, throw, thrust, parry, fake, jab, force, SOMETHING!! But now, it's show. A punch is the same as a fist in the air. It doesn't mean anything. I hate it with such a passion that it hurts. I'm fishing in a lake that has fish that don't reproduce good offspring here. Soon, after I've caught all the good fish, I'll be left with the new, stupid dumb fish that taste bad and I'll be pissed off cause I'll have to take up golf, or (this pains me) American action, where stunt doubles, mattresses, computer effects, cords and cables, bar fights and 4 camera angle changes per second plague the screen like ticks.... Sammo, Jackie, Biao, Guang, Lo, hell even CHOW YUN FAT, DO SOMETHING!!!! AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT TOM CRUISE IN MI2 OR KEANU IN THE MATRIX!!! I hope we don't lose this genre. I'll have to make a movie that will bring it all back. That's my vow: if HK action ceases to be GOOD (which is the stage it's in now, and I'm talking about Supercop and Mr. Nice Guy too), I'll make a movie that brings it all back. I'll choreograph like the old masters did, a lot too. I'll go back to the days of Lo Wei if I have to, then bring it to the quickness of Prodigal Son and the stunts of Project A, and the diversity quickness of the other Lucky Star movies like Wheels on Meals and, again, Project A. To top it off, I'll peak things with the old style mixed with quickness of Drunken Master 2 and Shanghai Affairs and the big-city-types of Tiger Cage 2 and Dragon Fight, but I'll keep it from getting to the likes of Romeo Must Die and Black Mask and this junk I'm reviewing, and Blacksheep Affair. These go too far, and the credit starts going to the actors who don't even do their stunts anymore because they discover the new technology that prevents them from having to do that fall from the clock tower 4 times or that spin 506 times to get it just right. Instead, they can put some numbers into a program someone wrote, and BAM, they're heroes. They can slap on some wires and do three kicks in the air, all because the computer eliminates the wires. COME ON KEANU, 6 MONTHS OF TRAINING SHOULD'VE TAUGHT YOU HOW TO KICK THREE TIMES IN THE AIR! This isn't American cinema where people can lay back and use the computer to do the dirty work. This cinema is where the actors are the ACTUAL heroes. Yuen Biao was the hero in Righting Wrongs, not his character. In this cinema, the actor is the acted. Who Am I? misses this point clearly.

1/10 for the movie
Jackie, I'll give you 8/10 for your performance, but this movie is aweful.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

1/5 - Not a 0/5 because there are a few flashes where it's ok, but it's not good.

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