Jackie Chan

Hong Kong cinema is a lot more than martial arts films starring Jackie Chan, as the Charles will demonstrate over the next few weeks.Beginning tonight and continuing through the month, Thursdays will be devoted to films from the former British protectorate, now a part of China. And viewers may be in for a surprise.Though martial arts and subtitles in pidgin English abound, Hong Kong cinema boasts hefty doses of fantasy and comedy, carefully choreographed mayhem (director John Woo does for shootouts what Busby Berkeley did for dancing girls)

Jackie Chan has fast hands. Chris Tucker has a fast mouth. Together, they make fast work of "Rush Hour," an enjoyable enough take on the odd-couple-as-police-partners theme (think "48 HRS" or "Lethal Weapon").Chan is Inspector Lee, a police detective who opens the film hard at work beating the bejeebers out of the entire Hong Kong underworld (as always, Chan's a joy to behold when he lets his reflexes do the talking). He's successful, but not entirely: When a local crime lord takes his bag of tricks to Los Angeles and arranges for the kidnapping of the Chinese consul's 11-year-old daughter, Lee is summoned to help the FBI find her.But the FBI wants no part of his help, and that's where James Carter (Tucker)

Even by the standards of a latter-day Jackie Chan movie, "Mr. Nice Guy" is pretty silly stuff. Plot is never the point in these things; action is. But the action here is showing signs of tiring.The film supposedly has nine fight scenes and more stunts than the past three Jackie Chan pictures combined. But none of those scenes is a show-stopper, like the motorcycle chase and wind-tunnel battle of Chan's last effort, "Operation Condor." At first, the humor is there, as are Chan's charisma and eye-popping physical prowess.

Jackie be nimble, Jackie be quick, Jackie jump over the candlestick -- at 200 feet above the ground.That's pretty much the appeal of the great Hong Kong actor-stuntman-clown-hero and that's pretty much the plot of his recent films, of which "Jackie Chan's First Strike" is a more than typical example.In his earlier Hong Kong police films, the stories had at least a whiff of naturalism and a mote of seriousness. The plots actually made some sense, or at least seemed to suggest someone had thought about them on two consecutive days.

In a game attempt to take up some of the slack left by the departure of the Baltimore Film Forum, the Charles will run the occasional retrospective film series, titled "Monday Screens at the Charles," beginning tonight with the first of five Hong Kong action films.The timing is brilliant, as two vets of the Hong Kong scene, John Woo and Jackie Chan, have just made successful assaults on the American market; director Woo with his dazzling "Broken Arrow" and star Chan with the lighter-than-air astonishment "Rumble in the Bronx."

The new James Dean stamp is selling well, and a 40th-anniversary reissue of his last movie is set for theatrical release this fall.The 1971 film of Roald Dahl's children's book, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," is scheduled for a 25th-anniversary reissue.The box-office success of Jackie Chan's "Rumble in the Bronx" has inspired Miramax to arrange a wider release for one of his earlier Hong Kong classics.Everything old is new again, mostly because reissues are relatively cheap to mount and almost always profitable.

Jackie Chan is plotting his escape from this interview. The room is essentially empty, save for two chairs, one lined up behind the other; Chan sits backward in his chair, facing his inquisitor in the other chair. He sizes up the situation."I'm handcuffed, and you're the bad guy, just sitting there," Mr. Chan says -- hypothetically, of course. "I'm sitting here," he continues, rocking his chair playfully, an impish expression on his face. "And you're reading a newspaper, and then I get up."

"Rumble in the Bronx" may or may not make Jackie Chan as large a star in America as he is in Asia, but it certainly will appeal to a certain kind of person.That would be the person who a.) lives and b.) breathes.Chan is capable of making real movies, as his great Hong Kong drama "Police Story" demonstrated, but this one is hardly in that category. Consider it more a goof, a laugh, a platform for showing off the banty guy's awesome physical skills as martial artist and absolutely fearless stuntman.

I'm so new to the pleasures of Hong Kong cinema that I perhaps haven't as yet developed a feeling for its nuances and lack, furthermore, the capacity to make fine distinctions. Still, "Crime Story," which opens today for four days at the Charles, feels very much like the best of the six or seven films the Charles has brought in this fall.This is a terrific movie. It stars the Hong Kong superstar actor-athlete Jackie Chan, but it's been constructed much more to American tastes; the action, while brutal and thrilling and ingenious at once, doesn't become the movie but merely an expression of its moods.

Connoisseurs of mayhem are reminded that the third in the Charles' series of occasional Hong Kong Movie Mondays is upon us, with the theater showing Jackie Chan's "Police Story 2" at 7 p.m.The two previous exhibitees, Ringo Lam ("Full Contact") and John Woo ("A Better Tomorrow"), have essentially been gun guys. Lots of bang bang. Endless bang bang, in fact. Nothing but bang bang. But Chan is a chop-chop guy.In fact, he's probably cinema's pre-eminent martial artist, and the fights he designs are extraordinary whirligigs of brilliantly choreographed action and thrilling stunts.

Kung fu purists may scoff, but escapists with a sense of humor should romp through The Forbidden Kingdom. It teams Hong Kong superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the first time in an American/Mandarin fantasy that showers affectionate irreverence on martial-arts classics as well as kitsch milestones like The Karate Kid. In an irresistibly giddy story that plays mix and match with mythologies from Chinese legendry and Greek fable to pulp fiction, Michael...

The only thing that's up-to-date about Rush Hour 3 is the way that 53-year-old Jackie Chan shows his age. As Chief Inspector Lee, the sly Hong Kong counterpart to Chris Tucker's motor-mouthed, exhibitionist L.A. cop James Carter, Chan demonstrates how a martial artist can segue into pure entertainer with a little help from his friends. Chan still wrings laughs from outrageous derring-do, but he's more willing than ever to detonate a visual punch line by actually getting punched or by helping Tucker prove (or improve)

Forbes.com has named Jackie Chan one of 10 generous celebrities, placing the Hong Kong action film star among the ranks of Bono, Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie. The Web site said that Chan, who set up the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation, gave $64,000 to UNICEF to help tsunami victims in Asia in December 2004, and recently donated $100,000 to Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based charity for the homeless. Besides Chan, Bono, Winfrey and Jolie, the other generous celebrities identified by Forbes.

WASHINGTON -- One film into his career, and Thai actor Tony Jaa is being compared to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. That's heady company for an actor looking to specialize in martial-arts films, but Jaa isn't quite ready to embrace the hype. "In terms of replacing Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan or Jet Li, I would never consider that," Jaa says through an interpreter. "They are my mentors, and my masters." But if Jaa isn't ready to proclaim himself the new martial arts superstar, plenty of other people are. Fan Web sites have been abuzz about his film, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, since it was released in Asia and Europe two years ago; at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival, audience members were so adrenalized by the movie, according to The New York Times, that they didn't want to leave the theater.

Jackie Chan movies are known for jaw-dropping stunts and thrilling action. Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is known as literature's most famous travelogue. Whoever thought these two cinematic templates belonged together? Heaven knows what the suits at Disney were thinking, for what they ended up with was a bland Jackie Chan movie and a lifeless travelogue. (A site near Berlin stands in for all of Europe, while Thailand fills in for anything Eastern.) Of course, there's a worthy question to be asked, as to whether there's a place for works like 80 Days in today's high-speed, high-tech reality, where jetting off to all corners of the globe is a regular occurrence for many people, and where television and the Internet have made the world a much smaller place.

With the last remnants of winter finally dribbling through art theaters, let us now praise summer remakes, sequels and franchises. With trailers rampant and the movies themselves unseen, every question mark registers as a come-on. Around the World in 80 Days, with hip British actor Steve Coogan in the David Niven role of Phileas Fogg and Jackie Chan (Jackie Chan!) in the Cantinflas role of Passepartout? Count me in. The third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with a fresh director (Alfonso Cuaron, of A Little Princess)

Jackie Chan fans have, of late, been reduced to panning for gold nuggets in the increasingly muddy river that has been his post-Hong Kong Hollywood career. The Medallion, his latest, is just that - a lot more mud than gold. He finally loses his 1970s helmet-hair haircut. He adds, briefly, a little edge to his friendly, protective and nonlethal martial-arts comic persona. In British slapstick comic Lee Evans, Chan finds a foil who is at least the equal of Chris Tucker, his Rush Hour mate.

SUN SCORE **1/2 As the reluctant cowboy hero known as "the Shanghai Kid" or Chon Wang (pronounced "John Wayne"), Jackie Chan has developed a warm, mellow ruefulness that humanizes both his own outlandish stunts and Owen Wilson's drawling, satiric slacker mannerisms as inept gunslinger Roy O'Bannon. In Shanghai Knights, Chan keeps earning our good will even when the material is beneath him. This sequel to Shanghai Noon takes the East-West odd couple to London in search of the man who killed Wang's father.

SUN SCORE ** Jackie Chan fans won't find much to cheer in his latest, The Tuxedo. The gruesome on-screen murder in the opening moments tells us this is not going to be your typical Jackie Chan film. Hong Kong's martial-arts comic, the Kung Fu Buster Keaton, is misused in this blundering and bloody debut by the former TV commercial director Kevin O'Donovan. If it weren't for a few genuine Chan novelties and the presence of the goofy Jennifer Love Hewitt, this much-delayed and re-edited mess would be a total loss.

Jackie Chan is an athletic marvel with a self-effacing charm. Chris Tucker is a very funny guy. And 1998's Rush Hour was an unforced little gem of a buddy film, an East-meets-West comedy evincing good chemistry between its stars and enough laughs to keep the customers satisfied. So what happened to Rush Hour 2? The chemistry between Chan and Tucker is pretty much a memory. The laughs are still there, but they come mostly in the form of shtick, performed by Tucker and often having little connection to the rest of the movie.