Who Am I?

Jackie Chan is a special operative, part of an elite military unit who are employed to capture a group of scientist working on a potent force that can be a power source or a weapon of mass destruction. After the job the group is betrayed and their helicopter forced to crash – Jackie is the only survivor. He comes too much later in an African village having lost his memory. When he has regained full strength he begins to try and find who he is – however his ex-employers are also keen to ensure he knows nothing and that they can complete their work.

The story here is solid – not much more can be said than that. It works quite well as a thriller plot but it wouldn't stand up by itself. Happily we have two things saving the plot. The first is the strand of physical comedy that runs through Chan's work – here we have plenty of little jokes scattered around, e.g. Chan is fighting one man and uses the man's tie against him, another man waits to fight Chan but pointedly removes his tie first! The second (and more important) aspect is the fight scenes. For much of the film the action seems to be toned down – indeed there are only 4 or 5 main scenes in the movie where Chan lets rip. However all of these are good, however the final roof top fight (in fact the whole last 20 minutes) is excellent and worth watching the film for.

As always the film doesn't worry about details rather it focuses on choreography. This means we have bad support actors….and we do! It means that things like realism and continuity go out the window…..a car slides on it's side, spins and then turns over again – however seconds later it has no scratches anywhere! And some of the early special effects are a little ropy. Although these are minor problems.

Chan is excellent in the lead and is a real wonder to watch – I wish I could move like him now…never mind when I'm his age. His ability at both martial arts and comedy helps this film immensely. It is hard to fault him for effort.

Overall this is a good Chan movie – it has the same faults as all his movies do, but it's funny, has some good action scenes and ends with a really good conclusion. Well worth watching.