'Who Am I?' sees the usual Chan kicks and punches

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): Tired of watching Western action actors kicking bad guys on the big screen? Then give Jackie Chan's action-comedy Who Am I? a try.

In true Hollywood style, the movie begins with a raid by a group of super commandos recruited by the CIA on a secret high- tech weapons research laboratory deep in the African jungle.

But the team's victory takes a twist when the commandos' leader betrays and kills all of them but one, Jackie Chan.

Rescued by tribespeople who take him to their settlement in the desert, Chan, who is suffering from amnesia, is called Who Am I by the tribe, after the first question he asks when waking up.

In search of his true identity, Chan finds his way out of the desert and later becomes a hero after saving an injured driver, who was in a cross-country race in the desert.

But his notoriety brings him bad luck. With his picture all over the local papers in Sun City, it is not difficult for the bad guys to track him down and attempt to finish him off once and for all.

There is not much to say about the storyline. It has a theme common to other Western action movies.

Not much can be said, either, about Chan's English, even though this is not his first movie in English instead of Cantonese.

But judging by how many were among the theater audience, the 42-year-old Chan, whose Chinese screen name is Sing Lung, it was obvious that he has a real following here.

The movie's attraction is certainly not the beautiful women: Michelle Ferr'e as Christine, a CIA agent, or Yamamoto Mirai as Yuki, a sister of the injured driver.

The attraction still lies with Chan's famous stunts.

Even though a smile never leaves his face, at his age some might question his ability to keep on performing such dangerous stunts. But more also want to see even more of them.

In Who Am I?, Chan proves that he still can live up to his fans' expectations.

Falling from an airborne helicopter without a parachute, right into the waiting jungle below and then crashing into the branches of a tree before reaching the ground head-first is only one of the stunts he performed in Who Am I?

The audience also held their breath as Chan climbed down a skyscraper and in through a window without any tools.

Apart from bruises, Chan fortunately did not suffer any serious injuries while filming Who Am I?, which was partially shot in Pahang forest, Malaysia; Sun City, South Africa; and then Rotterdam, the Netherlands under the direction of director Benny Chan.

Having made over 40 films in 22 years of his career on the big screen, dangerous stunts are not new to Jackie Chan.

In Police Story II, he jumped off a balcony onto a truck going one way and onto a double-decker bus going the other way and then through a window into the second floor of the bad guys' headquarters.

In his biggest hit, Drunken Master, Chan scooted across real hot coals, ate red-hot chili peppers and swallowed industrial- strength alcohol.

It's still fresh in people's minds how Chan, dazed and bloody, was carried out a stretcher after he missed a tree branch and hit a rock in Armour of God.

And when he broke an ankle while jumping onto a moving Hovercraft in Rumble in the Bronx.

The outtakes of blown stunts, both with comical and tragic results, are the most awaited scenes and most viewers say glued to their seats after the closing credits.

Chan is not the first Asian icon, but is one of many lured to Hollywood.

Not so long ago, Chow Yun Fat played an assassin in Replacement Killer, and Michelle Yeoh played in James Bond's Tomorrow Never Dies.

With this action-movie so typical of Chan, he appears trapped in the old stereotype of Asian actors: the kung-fu stars, gangsters or emperors.

But with his earnings of US$3 million to $4 million a picture and a share of the profits, perhaps it is not so easy for Chan to leave the big screen and stop playing the nice guy who can beat all the bad guys with no weapons but his hands and feet, and with not much blood being spilled.

For some, Chan's movies may be slapstick, but, along with his typical stunts, the movie is quite watchable because it is simple and fluid.

And right after one walks out of the theater, it is Chan's stunts that are remembered most, rather than the story.