Who Am I? (1998) October 11, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Comedy, Action, 1990s films , trackbackDirector: Benny Chan; Jackie Chan Main cast: Jackie Chan; Michelle Ferre; Ron Smerczak; Yamamoto Mirai Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Golden Harvest
An operative of an elite military unit (Chan) wakes in an African village with no memory of his past. Travelling the world, he discovers his past is inexorably linked with Morgan (Smerczak) and the quest for a source of unlimited fuel that could also be used as a terrifying weapon.
Looking at other reviews of this film makes me think I’m probably its biggest fan. While I readily admit that you could fly an airship through the plotholes and the acting is quite appalling (by everyone who has at least one line of dialogue), I find it rather enjoyable. It’s not Academy Award™ material, but it never pretends to be and apart from the feeling you get that the scriptwriters bit off way more than they could chew, it mainly works out quite nicely.
The usual problem of a Hong Kong production filming in English producing some poor performances is compounded by the addition of Michelle Ferre as reporter/girl-with-a-secret Christine. In real life, she was a reporter of French and Japanese descent with no acting experience until Jackie took a shine to her. You can see why he did, and why he wanted her in the film – she’s quite simply stunning, with a gorgeous face and striking dark eyes. To say she can’t act is a little harsh under the circumstances, and in all fairness, hers is not the worst performance in the film. Jackie himself is not without his faults in the acting department – the scene where he raises his arms to the sky to cry “Who am I?” in torment makes me cringe aver single time. Rounding out the team is Yamamoto Mirai as Japanese racing driver Yuki, who is apparently a professional actress although you may not be able to guess from her hammy performance.
The ladies’ roles are similar to that of the hopeless comic relief characters of Project A Part II or Operation Condor, and at times Who Am I? does feel very similar in style to the latter title. This probably means that if you didn’t enjoy Operation Condor, you probably won’t enjoy this. Although some attempts to make this film reach an international audience are made – the English language dialogue and the inclusion of some rather big explosions – this is still very much a Hong Kong film with a very Chinese sensibility. That is why, I think, people have such a hard time connecting with it. If put against your typical Hollywood blockbuster of the period, Who Am I? just looks hokey and weird. As a Hong Kong action movie, it can hold its own against the best of them.
No discussion on Who Am I? can be complete without addressing the African segment of the film, where Chan wakes to find he’s lost his memory. This is an obvious reworking of Chan’s Eastern/Western idea that he had been talking about throughout the nineties and was used wholesale by Sammo Hung in the film Once Upon a Time in China and America. While I indeed admire Chan’s film, I do feel that Sammo made the most out of the idea, although his methods for acquiring the material might be quite ignoble. On this viewing, it was plain to me that the African tribe sequence is easily the weakest part of the film. It feels condensed and doesn’t ring true. The film was originally going to be shown in two parts and it does appear that there was a lot of material from this part that didn’t make the final cut. On the strength of what’s here, I would say that’s for the best – although we will probably never know for sure whether the inclusion of more material would have improved matters.
There’s a noticeable rise in the fun factor immediately following Jackie’s departure from the tribe, and the gags come thick and fast. While the action scenes are not as plentiful and intricate as his earlier films, what’s here is still pretty impressive. The brief skirmish in South Africa where Jackie is handcuffed and being beaten on by a group of thugs is reminiscent of the scene in Operation Condor where Jackie fights off the fanatics in De Garcia’s apartment. Other stand out moments occur on top of a Rotterdam skyscraper, where Jackie and Ron Smoorenburg start kicking the hell out of each other, and a chase through the Dutch streets which even manages to get a brief but funny clog fight thrown in.
As with Gorgeous, this film has been mauled for its “international” (i.e. US) release – approximately sixteen minutes’ worth of footage has ended up being removed. It is therefore necessary to track down the increasingly scarce Universe DVD if you want to see the film the way the makers intended on this format (I believe the VCD version is still available). Although the transfer’s quite unremarkable, and you have to manually switch on the English subs for the African section of the film, this really is one of the shortest two hour long films I’ve ever seen and deserves to be seen in its entirety.
Although one of the most boneheaded Jackie Chan films in terms of the script (he begins a sentence with “One thing my father taught me…”, which for a man with total amnesia is pretty strange), it’s a fun ride and in my opinion Jackie’s last truly great film. Or at least the last film where it is easily recognisable as a Jackie Chan film in terms of style and content. And for me, that’s the same thing.
Comments»
Quite underrated and I agree it’s definitely Chan’s last great film. One thing that always bothered me; is this film supposed to be a parody/satire of the action movie genre or is it actually taking itself seriously?
I see what you mean but I tend to think the film isn’t quite self-aware enough to be an attempt at parody. Anyhow, it’s nice to know there’s at least one more fan of the film!
Oh I love this film. I’m 90% sure it was the first JC movie I saw (it may have been First Strike, but I think it was this) so it’s probably just nostalgia talking but I reckon it’s pretty underrated overall.
Nobody watches a Jackie movie for great acting or fantastic plots and if people can’t see the simple fun in a film like this then, well, it’s their loss.
I actually prefer Who Am I? over both Operation Condor and Project A Part II, and I thought the women’s roles were better here than in OC especially. If there’s one aspect I don’t much like about a lot of JC films it’s the airhead women - though honestly that’s common to a lot of HK cinema.
Yes, that’s true. But then again, historically you have some REALLY strong women in Hong Kong films - Cheng Pei Pei in COME DRINK WITH ME springs to mind. I think HK on the whole is pretty schizophrenic in its attitude to women and always has been. Nowhere will you have such misogyny (TIGER ON THE BEAT and DON’T GIVE A DAMN are the ones that stick out in my mind) along with such…er…whatever the opposite of misogyny is…!
Thanks for the comment, and apologies for the late response - for some reaon I didn’t get a notification that you’d posted!
I blame Chang Cheh. The trailer for Deadly Duo proudly proclaims it to be “A real man’s picture…with none of the fairer sex”
That’s the spooky thing with some of Chang Cheh films: it’s almost like women never existed. You can have young girls and old crones, but nothing in between!
Thing is, Chang Cheh’s early films like Magnificent Trio and Trail of the Broken Blade have good roles for women, if not fighting ones. Maybe when the rugged Jimmy Wang Yu gave way to the more conventionally handsome Ti Lung and David Chiang, Chang began to change