Armour of God

So after Kelvin told me that Operation Condor was actually a sequel of sorts, to this movie, I mentioned that to Alex when he came by last Friday, and he was all in on watching some more Jackie Chan.

First interesting thing you learn in this movie - other than it's apparently a recurring gag for Jackie's character to fall down really tall, ludicrously steep slopes at the beginning of the movie - is that before "Asian Hawk" was a mercenary/fortune hunter, he was part of a Partridge Family/Jackson 5 style pop group called "The Losers". And he left because he lost out on the affections of one of his fellow members to the lead singer, some complete loser named Alan.

Clearly that girl has no taste.

A guy Alex described as a, 'Count Chocula-looking motherfucker' has Laura (or Lorelei) abducted to force Jackie to bring him the remaining three pieces of the Armour of God, which this dude will then destroy, allowing their God to prosper. The other three pieces were bought by a guy rich enough to own 50 dogs and 3 leopards as his security system, which is just nuts, but hell, if you're that rich, you might as well go extravagant. He agrees to loan them out (the armor pieces, not the dogs and leopards), if Jackie brings him the other two pieces, and lets his daughter go along as a precaution. She's not nearly as competent as she pretends, but she's a lot more useful than Alan, at least.

Alex found some description of the movie online that described it as having the greatest car chase ever, and I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's pretty good. One of those things were you just have to laugh at some of the absurd shit that happens. Especially when the car opens to reveal another, smaller car inside.

The movie falls apart a bit at the end. Laura is supposed to capture Jackie, but captures Alan instead. The bad guy has the pieces of the armor, but doesn't destroy them. May, the rich guy's daughter, just kind of vanishes for most of the final act, and there's no resolution of things between her and Jackie. Or really, between Jackie and Alan, where the friendship is supposed to be strained over Laura, and they don't really seem to bury the hatchet.

I only noticed that stuff in retrospect, because in the moment, I was too busy watching Jackie Chan do crazy shit like hopping from one stalagmite to another while fighting four large ladies in stiletto heels, or rappelling down the side of a hot air balloon. Which is the sort of thing I was watching the movie for, so mission accomplished.