Jackie Chan: My Stunts (1999)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Undescribable Perfection

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is an excellent documentary of JAckie and how he and his stunt-men do what they do in their movies.lots of great clips and shows how they practise for it. Would have been better if the stunt-men had interviews and such but oh well...you'll be able to recognise most of them anyway.Ignore what Andrew Hernandez said about Jackie taking his stuntmens injury in a joking manner - of course he doesn't, but the fact they've been doing this for many years is part of their jobs. JAckie has been through much worse as a young stuntman and strictly taught how to deal with pain.Also about Ron - yeah, he is great but he had no timing to fit Jackie - WHICH IS WHY HE GOT ANGRY! Its not harsh at all, we all know Jackie is a perfectionist and he's said its difficult to work with other people rather than his own.Andrew Hernandez also said that Yuen Biao is more of a success than JAckie or should have been. Well, Andy, its not all about who's the greatest fighter or the most flexible, its how they can pull it off on screen. Jackie made it big through mixing comedy and action on screen - he didn't flip and jump around the place for no reason, it had a purpose. Plus I'm sure Yuen Bio would treat Ron the same way so you're obviously a Jackie hater and shouldn't really be reviewing this.

If you are at all into the "wow, how did they do that" aspect of filmmaking, this is great stuff. JC shows the technique, training and pure gumption that make these films work. In an increasingly CGI movie environment, JC remains fairly steadfast to what has worked in the past, and talks about it : "hey, we don't have the budget to fake this, so we just gotta do it".

I learned a lot about the film making techniques in this documentary. Jackie's use of props and camera angles is very clever. But Jackie does seem to pat himself on the back too much.When he talks about the stuntmen who were seriously hurt in the bus sequence of POLICE STORY, he refers to it in a joking manner. I'm pretty sure those men didn't appreciate being crippled and made fun of.The scene where Jackie is coreographing Ron Smoorenberg in WHO AM I is insulting. Somehow, it's a common practice in Hong Kong to double actors not because of saftey concerns or because an actor can't do a move, but because an actor can not perform the way the coreographer wants them to perform. Ron was very capable of doing his own action in WHO AM I, but when Jackie was directign his fight with him, he was getting mad at him for not following his rythym. People may say that Ron was the one not keeping up with Jackie, but the fact was that Jackie could not keep up with Ron. As a martial artist, it's a very bad thing if you can't keep up with an opponent's movements, and that reflects badly on Jackie. Rather than work with Ron's skills and limitations, Jackie had him doubled by Bradley James Allen. It seemed pointless to hire Ron for WHO AM I if he was just going ot be doubled for scenes he could easily pulled off, but Jackie showed off how selfish he is in this segment.Yuen Biao, Jackie's longtime friend in Peking Opera and HK cinema is much more deserving of Jackie's success. He is a better actor, more charming, a better martial artist, and a better stuntman. If only he was willing to learn English, he could be much bigger in the US.

Jackie Chan walks us through a series of stunts and tricks of his trade. This includes the man himself showing us how the main stunts are carried out and how individual scenes in several films were planned and put together. A narrator also takes us into Jackie's stunt lab where stunt men show the importance of timing and the little things that make it all look so very good.When I saw this film coming on TV I knew it was going to be about the `how to' rather than a best of compilation. I was right – the film picks several films (including The Young Master, Who Am I and Rush Hour) and looks at key scenes and what went into them. This is interspersed with Jackie addressing the camera and talking generally about his style. It sounds dull but it is actually very good.I found it interesting because I never realised how very difficult these fights were to put together and all the little things that Jackie considers when doing them. The most interesting bits are on set stuff that I didn't know (like the difficulties in getting the performers on the roof in Who Am I to get their timing right) but mainly Jackie talking. He is very interesting at the worst of times but he is always very good when he is talking about his craft.Some viewers will be upset that it isn't full of great stunts and outtakes but it does what it is suppose to do well. Some of it is poor – the narrator telling us what a green screen is in a voice like she's talking to children is a real low, but as long as Jackie is either talking or doing his thing then this is very watchable.Overall this is a must for all fans and has lots of `oh, I didn't know that' moments albeit over a small selection of films. Not perfect but pretty interesting.