Quotes of the Day

The news sent a seismic shiver through the film world: "Jackie Chan admits he doesn't do all his own stunts." A few weeks ago, the universe's top action star acknowledged that, if a movie requires him to "ride an F-16 jet fighter, or to jump over a series of hurdles with a crazy horse, or to perform two 720-degree somersaults," he will hand the job to a younger daredevil. "But one somersault, I'll do it myself."

Jackie is just 48, but in stuntman years that's about 90. He has been punishing his body, and vice versa, since he was a 7-year-old Peking Opera student. After more than 50 starring roles and 100 broken bones, he shouldn't be the prisoner of the product guarantee that made him famous. Yet Chan's fans expect that, like a great dancer or a porn star, he will do it for real and do it forever.

Chan, too, doesn't want to stop. He has been a Hong Kong icon for ages—his breakthrough film, Snake in Eagle's Shadow, opened 25 years ago next month—but he became a Hollywood star only in 1998. And dammit, he's determined to enjoy the ride, however many bumps he may take.

His latest entry, Shanghai Knights, doesn't mess with the Jackie Chan Hollywood formula. It teams him with a goofy American—Owen Wilson here, Chris Tucker in Rush Hour—who sasses his way into predicaments that Chan must get him out of. Knights, like its predecessor Shanghai Noon, is a western, the U.S. equivalent of the Qing dynasty martial-arts films that made Chan famous back home. Wilson's Roy O'Bannion is the self-legendizing cowboy, and Chan's Chon Wang (sounds like John Wayne) is essentially Roy's stern Indian sidekick. That's apt, since, when he's not smiling, Jackie's face has the weathered severity of a Cherokee scout.

The plot, which travels from Peking to Nevada, New York and London in search of a sacred scroll—but never makes it to Shanghai—is serviceable. The script contrives to convene every Victorian celebrity, from Jack the Ripper and Arthur Conan Doyle to Queen Victoria herself. The stars have an easy rapport, and share it graciously with Singapore TV-diva Fann Wong, who's quite appealing as Chon's sister. It's all disposable, second-rate fun. But at least director David Dobkin had the bright idea to let Chan, for the first time in a U.S. film, supervise the action scenes. Knights atones for Chan's dismal The Tuxedo, which straitjacketed his physical brio in a computerized suit.

Admirers of his early Hong Kong films will recognize several of Chan's self-homages. His versatility with an umbrella echoes the great battle on a bus in Police Story. The juggling act Chon forces two thugs to perform with several of their boss' expensive vases is reminiscent of Chan's balancing acts in Drunken Master, and a teeming, imaginatively staged free-for-all in an outdoor market recalls Drunken Master II. At the end, when our heroes dangle from Big Ben's giant minute hand, Chan connoisseurs will whisper, "Ah yes. Project A!"

Does the reprising of his greatest hits mean Chan has run out of ideas? No: only that he takes as much pleasure as his fans do in playing the oldies, and in proving that, as he nears 50, Chan can still display the grace and strength of his younger self. With a little help from the occasional stunt double.

• Richard Corliss
• In his latest venture into topsy-turvy Hollywood, Jackie Chan once again lands on his feet