To say that Jackie Chan was something of a big deal in the mid-eighties was something of a understatement. While it may be tough to envision it from a man who cameoed in not one, but two Cannonball Run movies, Chan and his peers had been steadily changing the face of Kung Fu cinema into something more contemporary and fresh with every new release, moving steadily away from the type of “antiquated” Kung Fu produced by the likes of Shaw Brothers. Of course, a lot of what the studio produced was fantastic, by you also could see why the younger guard wanted to change thing up and form them into their own image.
Thus after the smash hit success of Police Story, Jackie seemed to want to emulate Westen cinema a bit more by mimicking the type of adventure of Indiana Jones would turn up in while also introducing a fair bit of that James Bond slickness to boot. But which one would Chan settle on? Bond or Jones? Fuck it, thought one of cinema’s greatest physical performers; I’ll just do ’em both.
Asian Hawk (yup, that’s his name – although in the foreign dubs he’s just known as Jackie) is a former musician turned adventurer cum treasure hunter who we meet performing multiple feats of acrobatics as he strives to swipe an ornate sword from a tribe deep in the African jungle. However, after nabbing it and selling it for auction in Europe, Hawk is suddenly approached by Alan, his former band mate, who has a rather delicate favour to ask.
It seems that his fiancée, Lorelei, has been kidnapped by a satanic cult who parade around in broad daylight in black robes and villainous beards, and the only way Alan can get her back us to locate the three remaining pieces of a legendary armour known as the Armor Of God. The Cult already has two pieces, but tbe remaining three (including the sword Hawk just sold) are in the possesion of the reclusive Count Bannon and his sharpshooting daughter, May, who only agrees to lend out his pieces if he can get all five back in return. Complicating such matters even further is the fact that Lorelei used to Hawk’s girl back in the day, but despite their natural animosity, Hawk, Alan and May head out in Hawk’s unfeasibly ugly, thankfully one-of-a-kind Mitsubishi car in order to track down the cult and rescue the girl.
And that’s about it, actually. There’s mild fireworks between Hawk and May, Alan slowly bonds once again with his former friend despite being an utter liability and every so often the trio clash with the cult who seem to think it’s a good idea to constantly engage a martial arts expert while wearing monks robes. However, once our heroes discover the bad guy’s lair, the fight begins in earnest with Hawk beating the crap out of monks, a quartet of warrior women and having a rather stressful experience with numerous sticks of dynamite. Still, it’s all in a day’s work for a dude who unironically goes around calling himself Asian Hawk.
Only Jackie Chan could make a movie where he legitimately almost died from a stunt gone wrong and yet be almost completely forgettable, but despite leaving the virtually indestructible actor with a thimble sized hole on the right side of his head and hard of hearing in one ear, almost the entirety of Armor Of God stubbornly refuses to stick in the memory. It’s something of a similar and frustrating affliction that struck the 1984 bomb, Wheels On Meals which also remained curiously vague in the memory until a completely magnificent final twenty minutes snaps the film out of it’s mental fog.
Until then, Armor Of God is fairly standard stuff as it bounces between trying to match Indiana Jones’ sense of adventure while chucking in strangely distracting odes to James Bond with Hawk’s truly ghastly car featuring a Batpod style escape mode despite only having two seats. And yet while the half-strength daring do is perfectly fine compared to a lot of other action flicks, it feels that Chan – also writing and directing duties – is trying to make something so different from anything he’s made before, he actually leaves out some of the aspects of his movies that fans demand.
For example, Alan Tam’s estranged buddy proves to be something of a mistep as the film makes the huge mistake in thinking that Jackie Chan of all people would need comic relief. Oh sure, he’s been teamed with “idiot” characters before that included the likes of Sammo Hung, Owen Wilson and Chris Tucker, but they’ve managed to match his physical gift for ass-kicking slapstick with other talents that complement Chan amusingly well – Tam on the other hand is just annoying and springs the whole film whining while Lola Forner’s may isn’t much more than the same, sultry window dressing she was in Wheels On Meals.
However, like Meals On Wheels, the entire enterprise is saved as the movie cruises into its final third that finally allows the stunt team to cut loose and deliver the type of souped up brawls we were hoping to see in the first place. Starting with Chan trying to ward off attackers with sizable, flaming log and ending with him skydiving off a mountain to land on a hot air balloon, the director delivers Kung Fu manna from heaven that not only rachets up the enjoyment of the film, but also manages to contain once of the most infamous fights of Chan’s career.
While Police Story delivered once of the most frenzied final battles in martial arts history as Chan brawled his way through an entire mall and both Wheels On Meals and Dragons Forever saw our hero engage in flawless fisticuffs with Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, Armor Of God secures it’s place in the Chan hall of fame by having him trade blows with a quartet of fierce, muscular, afroed up, black women who attempt to mess him up real bad by kicking him with vicious looking stelletos. It’s a truly fantastic sequence that may actually include Chan’s greatest punchline ever where, in the heat of battle, he drives both fists into the breasts of one of his attackers only to deliver a tiny, awkward sorry that no doubt has been included on every sizzle reel made of the man.
So what we have here is an example of a Jackie Chan movie that got steadily more prevalent as his career moved on: the Javkie Chan movie that’s annoyingly basic, but that’s saved by a third act that contains the most out-there shit that you’ve ever seen. In fact, his output in the nineties were riddled with movies such as these with such titles as Who Am I? First Strike and Mr Nice Guy sitting awkwardly next to legitimate classics such as Drunken Master II and Police Story 3: Supercop. In fact, Armour Of God helped me realise that any Jackie Chan movie is only really as good as its final twenty minutes – and taken with this rule in mind, I guess Armor Of God is technically blessed.
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