How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History

Though now in his sev­en­ties, Jack­ie Chan con­tin­ues to appear on the big screen with reg­u­lar­i­ty. For most world-famous actors, that’s hard­ly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Giel­gud, say, had spent decades film­ing scenes of hand-to-hand com­bat and sus­tain­ing severe injuries in the per­for­mance of elab­o­rate stunts. View­ers of New Police Sto­ry 2 and Rush Hour 4, to name just two upcom­ing fran­chise projects, will sure­ly delight, as always, in Chan’s very screen pres­ence. But it goes with­out say­ing that he won’t be attempt­ing any­thing like what he did in his break­out Hong Kong films of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, which required a sin­gu­lar ded­i­ca­tion both phys­i­cal and cin­e­mat­ic.

There are also fans who argue that Chan reached his peak in the nineties, most of whom would adduce the cli­mac­tic fight scene above from Drunk­en Mas­ter II. Made in 1994, when Chan was 40 years old, it came as the osten­si­ble sequel to Drunk­en Mas­ter, from 1978, in which Chan’s por­tray­al of the tit­u­lar Qing dynasty folk hero launched him to star­dom in Asia.

Released in the U.S. as The Leg­end of Drunk­en Mas­ter in 2000 — after Chan had final­ly made it state­side with Rum­ble in the Bronx and the first Rush Hour — Drunk­en Mas­ter II met with crit­i­cal aston­ish­ment. “It involves some of the most intri­cate, dif­fi­cult and joy­ful­ly exe­cut­ed action sequences I have ever seen,” wrote Roger Ebert. His judg­ment of the final, steel-forge-set show­down: “It may not be pos­si­ble to film a bet­ter fight scene.” The Rossatron video below explains how the scene has drawn such reac­tions.

One ele­ment has been key to Chan’s suc­cess from the begin­ning: his humor, vis­i­bly descend­ed from the phys­i­cal com­e­dy of West­ern silent stars like Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton, which comes through even in the midst of the most intense hand-to-hand com­bat. In Drunk­en Mas­ter II, it’s “not only a pleas­ing addi­tion to the film, but a nec­es­sary part of the sto­ry itself,” through the course of which Chan’s pro­tag­o­nist must gain con­trol over the style of “drunk­en box­ing” born of his own fond­ness for the bot­tle. It is con­trolled drunk­en­ness, of course, that even­tu­al­ly brings him vic­to­ry in his both car­toon­ish and mas­ter­ful last fight, which required four months to shoot under the direc­tion of the star him­self (the film’s actu­al direc­tor Lau Kar-leung hav­ing ced­ed con­trol of the scene due to styl­is­tic dif­fer­ences). Today, there may be no action-com­e­dy per­former equal to Jack­ie Chan in his prime. But even if there were, would any stu­dio allow him so much of the oth­er secret ingre­di­ent, time?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kung Fu & Mar­tial Arts Movies Online

The Only Footage of Bruce Lee Fight­ing for Real (1967)

The Grace­ful Move­ments of Kung Fu & Mod­ern Dance Revealed in Stun­ning Motion Visu­al­iza­tions

Rad­i­cal French Phi­los­o­phy Meets Kung-Fu Cin­e­ma in Can Dialec­tics Break Bricks? (1973)

Why Is Jack­ie Chan the King of Action Com­e­dy? A Video Essay Mas­ter­ful­ly Makes the Case

How Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spec­tac­u­lar Stunts Dur­ing Silent Film’s Gold­en Age

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.