Who Am I? (1998)
Director: Benny Chan, Jackie Chan
Starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Ferre, Mirai Yamamoto, Ron Smerczak
Primary genre: Spy
Secondary genre: Action
Third genre: Comedy
The second undubbed Jackie Chan film, Who Am I?, is a bit of fun and definitely a step up from Chan’s Mr. Nice Guy (1997), released a year prior, but not by much. Boasting a more exotic flair, the story sees Chan as a member of an elite military unit ordered to steal a meteorite (yes, really). Once he successfully finishes the job, he mysteriously wakes up with amnesia inside the hut of a South African tribe. From there, his character (hilariously named Who Am I?) begins a quest to figure out what happened to him.
Yet, his quest to discover the origin of his condition is not particularly compelling. Badly done flashbacks, a sluggish momentum across a two-hour running time, and the same character Chan has been playing in several movies in a row result in a pretty dry and mostly toothless movie. Considering how the audience is miles ahead of the characters in terms of the (obvious) plot twists, this almost two-hour flick (Hong Kong cut) runs out of steam very quickly and comes alive only when there is some sort of action happening - the most famous trait of its legendary star.
Therefore, the flick is once again an excuse for Jackie to do all the things that Jackie wants to do. He wears traditional ornaments, picks up a baby lion, races a sporty Mitsubishi across the desert, wears wooden clogs, performs a breathtaking stunt by sliding down the Willemswerf building, and has a very lengthy rooftop two-on-one scuffle with two hitmen who use radically different martial arts styles (with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by Bradley James Allen as a fight double).
“I may have amnesia, but I’m not stupid!”
Despite the film’s honest and well-meaning intentions, you can’t help but feel how empty it all is. The stereotypical villains are non-existent, and the visceral fight choreography from his 80s flicks is replaced by a less impactful presentation. Despite some impressive athletics, Who Am I? does not boast any jaw-dropping sequences. Compared with what The Matrix (1999) did a year later, it feels slow and stale (by Chan’s own standards). Meanwhile, a Mitsubishi car chase has some solid stuntwork that maintains a sense of pace. But all the other self-indulgent elements of Chan’s personality are very much still on display: his hero is a master at everything, there are hot (and very young) Asian women, the brand placement (see Mitsubishi) continues, and the fights have a cartoony feel to them instead of the visceral and harmful energy that we experience in far superior outputs of his.
Almost two hours long for such a rather easygoing plot, Who Am I? will fill a Sunday afternoon nicely, but, funnily enough, you won’t remember it, just like the main hero’s predicament. At this point, Chan was more invested in capturing the West’s attention due to the success of Rumble in the Bronx (1995) and he was already turning toward the forthcoming Rush Hour (1998).
Digestible output by Chan
+The building slide is very impressive
+Exotic flair
+Typical Chan hero
+Some ok action scenes
-Less visceral fighting
-Non-existent story
-Lame villains