The Legend Of Drunken Master movie review (2000)

But before I describe it, some general comments: 1. Most of Jackie Chan's plots exist only as clotheslines on which to hang the action scenes. Characters are thin, the dubbed dialogue ranges from rudimentary to inane, and the climax comes not at the end of the story but during the outtakes, when we see Jackie really getting hit, burned, dropped, slammed, etc. The man seems to spend half of his life on a hospital stretcher or having fire extinguishers aimed at him.

2. At least half the running time consists of violence, but this is curiously innocent, harmless violence--not the brutal and ugly stuff of many Hollywood action pictures. There are villains and heroes, and a fight needs two sides, but everyone on both sides is in superb physical condition and seems to be fighting largely for the fun of it. Between the action, Jackie hams it up with broad humor. To rate this movie R is to be terminally clueless.

3. The pleasure of the fight sequences comes not in seeing people get hit, but in watching physical coordination and precise choreography. Chan himself routinely does little throwaway things like running up walls, leaping into train windows and making tricky twists-and-jumps.

4. The whole point is that Chan and the other actors actually do most of the stunts. Yes, there are certain special effects, and camera angles, and editing makes it appear that things happen in a way they perhaps did not. But when Jackie Chan falls into a pit of burning coals in this movie, that is really Jackie Chan, and the coals are really burning, and Chan insisted on doing the stunt three times until he got it right (the third time was when he burned himself and got those nasty scars you can still see on his arm).

Chan was 40 when "The Legend of the Drunken Master" was made, and although he is still in superb shape, he is reaching the age when he might want to produce and direct these movies instead of starring in them. It is all rather academic, sadly, because computerized special effects have made the authenticity of his physical skills sort of obsolete. When you see bodies whirling in air in "The Matrix," you don't think about computers, you simply accept them. But what Chan does, he is more or less, one way or another, actually doing.