WHO AM I?       Klik hier voor nederlands. After the Jackie Chan interview at last year's Rotterdam Film Festival, the set reports and photos, the interview with Mike Lambert and Brent Houghton, and the diary of my personal experiences as an extra, Project A finally completes its 'Who Am I?' cycle with a review of the film itself. You can imagine how much I've been looking forward to seeing this film, and not just to see if I'm in it (though I'm happy to say that I am). Having a Jackie Chan film shot in one's home town is a rare treat if you're not a resident of Hong Kong (or Melbourne) and I've been lucky enough to witness up close the workings of the Jackie Chan moviemaking machine. It did leave me with a nagging curiosity about the results, though. But first a brief history lesson. The genesis of Who Am I? lies with a script Jackie developed entitled The Lion Goes West. Set in the old west, it tells the story of a chinese martial arts master who goes to America, but winds up with a bout of amnesia, not knowing who he is or where he comes from. As people who have seen that film will know, the above summation sounds eerily like the plot for Once Upon A Time In China part 6. And they'd be right. Chan's script was plundered by Tsui Hark and used as the latest instalment of the Wong Fei Hung series (believe it or not, the chinese title of the film was "Wong Fei Hung's Lion Goes West"!). This left Jackie with an unusable plot. So he went about changing it, turning it into a modern-day story, changing the main character from a martial arts master to a soldier and the old west into the bushlands of Africa. The focus of the story is a crystal, dug up from a mine in South Africa, the tiniest fragments of which harness enough energy to power an entire city. An elite team of commandos, including Jackie (who is once again simply called Jackie Chan in the movie) hijack a convoy carrying both the crystal and the three scientists who know how to control it (a trio of dutch actors whose performances range from bad to awful). The team's leader, a renegade CIA agent named Morgan (Smerczak), decides to have every member of the unit killed and orders his right hand man Peter (Lambert) to crash the helicopter that carries them. Of course, Jackie is the only one to escape. Falling from the chopper before it crashes, he lands in the woods, where he is found by a local tribe, who nurse him back to health. Suffering from amnesia, Jackie has no idea who he is and keeps asking everyone 'Who am I?'. When he runs into two participants of a cross-country rally, he finds a passage back to civilisation, but not before winning the rally for them (dressed in native garb, no less). The publicity this garners puts Morgan back on Jackie's trail and pretty soon he is pursued, as he so often is, by a non-stop barrage of bad guys, who chase him all the way to the villains' headquarters in Rotterdam, the place where he hopes to finally find the key to his past. It all sounds a bit contrived of course, an almost unavoidable fact given the juggling trick pulled with the script. This isn't helped by the fact that much of the footage shot has been left out of the finished print. I'm not just saying that because I know it was cut out, but because it's noticeable from watching the film. The viewer gets a sense of being rushed through the proceedings. This keeps things moving, certainly, but I can't shake the feeling that the film should have been longer, even at its current two-hour length. As a result of the drastic editing job, characters don't get a chance to develop fully. Two prime examples of this are the characters played by Mike Lambert - who is presented as Morgan's right-hand man but never gets an opportunity to really do anything, let alone fight Jackie - and the one portrayed by Ed Nelson. His performance is very uneven and ranges from straight-faced in the early parts of the film to embarrassingly hammy later on. There's a definite lack of direction there and this is another of the film's weaker points: the approaches of co-directors Jackie and Benny Chan (no relation) are vastly different. Where Jackie opts for his usual mix of comedy and action, Benny Chan's approach is slightly darker and more serious. These two methods don't sit together very well and the Jackie Chan silliness sometimes sticks out like a sore thumb. However, it's not all doom and gloom. Camerawork is uniformly excellent, with both the African plains and Rotterdam's cityscape providing for breathtaking scenery. Chan himself delivers a fine performance, as does Smerczak as big bad Morgan. The two leading ladies thankfully get to do more than just get in the way, scream hysterically and be annoying (as leading ladies so often do in HK action comedies). Even the script, despite all its faults, overall provides a good fun adventure. But the real scorchers in Who Am I? are the action set pieces. A jungle raid, a series of huge explosions in a power plant (causing every electrical appliance in South Africa to explode), an inventive car chase (marred somewhat by the usual 'now you see the damage, now you don't' continuity goof-ups), and a finale which uses most of the personnel and equipment of the dutch marine corps. And while Jackie purposefully downplayed his martial arts prowess in his previous two efforts First Strike and Mr. Nice Guy (receiving a lot of criticism from fans in the process), he is back in top form here, with several scenes of extended hand to hand (foot to foot, chair to leg, clog to face, etc.) combat as Jackie tries to get away from his pursuers (as usual in the most inventive manner possible. The best of these is the climactic rooftop battle against a duo of cocky, over-confident fighters, followed by the already legendary slide down the side of the building. All in all, Who Am I? doesn't live up quite to expectations, mainly due to the aforementioned radical editing job. It still is good fun, though, thanks to lots of action and Jackie's usual winning charm. Now let's have that director's cut. WHO AM I? directors: Jackie Chan & Benny Chan starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Ferre, Mirei Yamamoto, Ron Smerczak, Mike Lambert, Ed Nelson 1998 label: Universe Laser & Video (HK) 120 minutes Tom Mes