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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

I've always loved Jackie Chan's movies for their childlike innocence. The logic in his movies is the logic of kids, which is also why kids absolutely love his movies (as I did).

The villains and heroes in his movies think the way kids do. If you defeat the neighborhood bad guy, of course all crime would stop. If you're a rich guy, of course you'd turn your entire wealth into diamonds. Who wouldn't want diamonds?

The violence in his movies is also never really sinister. Nor are the villains - especially the thugs-for-hire cannon fodder - ever truly evil. In Rumble in the Bronx, the initial bad guy - Tony (iirc) - becomes Jackie's friend once he realizes that Jackie is actually a good guy.

That's child logic, and I absolutely love it.

I know some "serious" movie critics fault his movies for their simplistic plot lines, but to me, this is a feature, not a flaw.

Outside of animation, I don't see any western movie maker doing anything remotely similar.

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One of my favorite quotes about Jackie Chan came from Roger Ebert while he was reviewing one of his movies: "You can see how hard he is working at every moment to please the audience. If he could jump out of the screen and buy popcorn for everyone in the theater, he would do it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_in_the_Bronx

After failing to confront Keung, the bikers trash Elaine's supermarket, during which two of Angelo's men are captured by White Tiger's men, who turn up at the supermarket in search of Angelo. Angelo's colleagues are unaware of his diamond heist and one is executed in a tree-shredder; his remains given back to the other gangsters as a warning to return the multimillion-dollar goods.

Yeah, puranjay needs to go rewatch some of Jackie's early movies again. A lot of Jackie's later movies -- and maybe the ones puranjay is remembering -- explicitly were kids movies. But many of his earlier ones definitely were not. Jackie's characters often had a certain childlike innocence, but the movies themselves did not.

When you’re more successful you have more control over the direction and type of films you’re in. Since almost all of his later movies are kids movies, I think GP’s comments regarding Chan are valid.

Don't get me wrong, I love Jackie and I think there's something to this. I adored his movies when I was a kid, even his more violent ones, and still do to this day. I just think it's not fair or true to paint all of his movies as being childlike. Including some of the ones the poster directly referenced.

Drunken Master 2 has one of the most depressing endings I've ever seen in a movie. After the final fight (which involves his drinking industrial grade alcohol to power up enough to win) the movie flashes forwards and it turns out that Jackie's character is severely and permanently mentally retarded because of the alcohol he drank.

This was taken out of the American release of the film.

yup, reading this comment I couldn't stop thinking about Rumble in the Bronx. Police Story and a bunch of other more obscure HK movies are pretty dark as well.

I think it's a real stretch to call Police Story a dark movie, unless you mean the weird remake they did more recently.

Yeah, New Police Story was weirdly dark.

Police Story 1-4 were all good fun. Not really for kids though. Plenty of bawdy jokes and innuendo.

I guess it depends who we mean by "kids" but the most risque thing I remember is a bunch of double entendres about being pricked because of a cactus.

I might be mixing up movies, which movie is the one where he's a policeman and it starts by him entering a hangar with all of his mates being hanged from the roof?

edit: found it, new police story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdEvxSxZAdE

you need to watch the film. It's nowhere near as grim as synopsis's sound. The gang parts are so goofy as to be hilarious, with the least realistic gang this side of west Side Story.

Come for the brutality at 0:16, stay for the HOVERCRAFT at 0:54:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuQpO9UJhck

It's goofy rather than grim, but it is still pretty damn sinister.

Yeah, I watched it with my nine-year old son and even told him to not watch that part. He peeked and was really affected by it. It's not like you see much but you know what just happened and that was enough.

Got an earful from my wife about that choice. Heheh

It sounds terrible on paper, but I never saw it as anymore than cartoon-level violence.

Remember those old Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom was once sawed in half, or blown to smithereens?

I think you're trying to say "he's a guy who made me smile when I was a kid" :)

(And still does, eh)

One of Jackie Chan's main inspirations is old Hollywood musicals, and I think you can sort of see it if you watch them and compare.

He's tried to do some more dark and serious movies (like Crime Story and Shinjuku Incident) but frankly he always seems kind of odd in them.

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