Jackie Chan In the Beginning...

At the start of Jackie's career as a leading man, Lo Wei, director of Bruce Lee films, "The Big Boss" and "Fist of Fury", cast Jackie as a new Bruce. In a string of unsuccessful movies Jackie made two movies for Ng See Yuen's production company "Seasonal". These movies (Snake in the Eagles Shadow and Drunken Master) would catapult Jackie Chan to stardom in Asia and start Jackie's style of Comedy and Kung Fu still seen today. From the success, Jackie signed a big deal to work for Raymond Chow's and Leonard Ho's Golden Harvest. His first film for them was the 1980 box office smash "The Young Master" and after its completion Jackie was given a chance to star in his first Hollywood film "Battle Creek Brawl" or "The Big Brawl"

Co produced between Raymond Chow and Fred Weintraub, and Directed by "Enter the Dragon" Director Robert Clause. It sees Jackie play Jerry Kwan, a young Chinese lad living with his family in 1930's Chicago. While protecting his families restaurant business by using his martial arts on the gangsters, he is noticed by the mob boss who decides he wants to use him in "The Battle Creek Brawl" a big underground street fight held in Texas. Unwilling to compete Jerry is forced into it after his brothers girlfriend is kidnapped.

Unsurprisingly Battle Creek Brawl was not a hit, unlike Jackie's Hong Kong movies the fights were slow and simple and little effort was put into making the movie feel like its from the 30's, (see the clothing in the roller-skating scene).

Battle Creek Brawl

Battle Creek Brawl Also at this time Jackie had a part in "The Cannonball Run". Jackie played one of the members of the Subaru team called "Jackie". Although the film was a success it had little to do with Jackie's presence as it starred an ensemble of the top names in Hollywood at the time including, Burt Reynolds, Dom Deluise, Roger Moore, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr.

Jackie in Cannonball Run

Trying Again

Jackie returned to Hong Kong on a low, next up he wanted to make a big Hong Kong film, Dragon Lord was mix of sport, Kung Fu, comedy and romance and had big production values, extremely over run and still holding the record amount of takes for one sequence, Dragon Lord didn't live up to expectation at the box office. In 1983 Jackie proved his worth again with the amazing "Project A". This action comedy was a huge hit and displayed some bone crunching stunt work from Jackie and his team.

In 1984 Jackie returned to make "The Cannonball Run 2" which again was a hit, but Jackie was overshadowed. Then in 1985 Jackie made his second Hollywood film as a lead "The Protector." Again co-produced by Golden Harvest as a vehicle for Jackie it was directed by James Glickenhaus. Jackie plays a New York cop but is terribly miscast. So unhappy with the final product, Jackie hired the actors to re-shoot the actions scenes for the Hong Kong print of the film.

The Protector The Big Break

Fed up with trying to brake into Hollywood Jackie would never try again, the next time it would be them coming to him. In 1996 Jackie made his Hong Kong film "Rumble in the Bronx" filmed in Toronto but set in New York it attracted the eyes of the western viewers and managed to get a international release. After a couple more of his Hong Kong films getting wider releases Jackie was cast in the Hit Action Comedy "Rush Hour" in 1998

Jackie played "Inspector Lee" a Hong Kong cop brought to America to help handle the kidnapping case of the Chinese Consulates daughter. Paired up with American comedian Chris Tucker the two made a humors team that proved to be a winning formula as the movie had great box office success.

Keeping It Up

Jackie was now a house hold name the world over, next up would be another buddy movie called "Shanghai Knights" (2000), this time paired up with smooth talking Owen Wilson as a mismatched team of Cowboy and Chinese imperial guard in Western America the two showed an even better partnership. With the success of Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2 was inevitable and in 2001 Chan and Tucker were once again reunited in this even bigger hit that saw the two in Hong Kong, LA and Las Vegas.

2002 saw the release of "The Tuxedo" in which Jackie plays Jimmy Tong a New York cab driver who gets recruited to be the chauffer for millionaire Dean Devlin, Jackie winds up wearing his tuxedo and finding out it has strange powers. "The Tuxedo" didn't go down well with critics and Chan and Jennifer Love Hewitt's onscreen relationship didn't work as well as the previous ones.

Jackie's most recent Hollywood film to date is the sequel to "Shanghai Noon" entitled "Shanghai Knights". The movie lived up to the first movie and regained some confidence in critics that Jackie has a good few years' left in him yet.

So what's next for Jackie Chan? Set for 2004 release is his remake of "Around the World in 80 Days." Jackie has also signed on to do "Rush Hour 3" and there is talk of "Shanghai Dawn" also the third in the series. Also at the time of writing there are rumors of Jackie playing the role as Kato in "The Pink Panther" remake. Jackie has for along time talked of his desire to make a non-action drama movie, I personally would love to see this. Be sure Jackie's not done yet and will keep going making entertaining movie for years to come.