Chan's the Man

I've been on a Jackie Chan kick, starting with DVDs in my own collection. When I was done with those, I found Rob-B-Hood (2006) streaming.

We meet Thongs (Jackie Chan) and Octopus (Louis Koo) cracking safes. Even while committing this crime, Chan is placing bets on the phone. When they are cracking the medicine safes at a hospital, they stumble into a hostage scene. A man has grabbed a woman's just delivered baby, claiming that it is his, not her husband's. When security starts to pile on him, he falls over a railing with the baby, and plummets to his death - but Jackie, in the middle of a heist, grabs the baby. In the excitement they slip away.  Their mastermind and mentor, Landlord (Michael Hui), is driving the getaway minivan.

We learn a little bit about their lives here. Chan is a degenerate gambler. He always owes money, ad his father rejects him in shame. Koo likes to spend money on Ferraris and shopping expeditions for high-class women. He is always running into his wife, who has to work at jobs like wearing a chicken suit outside a restaurant to make ends meet. And eventually, Koo's money runs out, his car is repoed, etc. 

And Hui, a tubby old man with thick glasses, has a wife who went crazy when she lost a pregnancy. She carries a baby doll whereever she goes. He is very kind and loving to her, and saves all the money he steals, building up a nest egg that is suddenly stolen. Now they all need money desperately. 

Hui finds a big job, and the guys jump on it with o questions. They only discover what it is when they are on the job - kidnapping a baby. They don't want to go through with it, but the price is millions. So they get the baby and get out. 

In the escape, Hui gets booked for reckless driving and has to go to prison for ten days. During this time, Chan and Koo have to keep the baby amused, fed and cleaned. So I went in thinking this was Little Miss Marker, now it's more Ransom of Red Chief. Actually, it's Three Men and a Baby - there's a mix of the regular trials of keeping a baby, and ridiculous stunts like getting the baby carriage stuck on the end of a police vehicle or carrying the baby over a roller coaster, being pursued by trains full of goons. 

It ends with them executed for kidnapping - nah, just kidding. There is no death penalty in China in 2006. But they do go to prison, with time off for saving the baby after kidnapping it. 

This is a different Jackie Chan movie, because he isn't a really nice guy. But he's about the softest he can be, while still being a crook and gambler. Also, he puts that baby in peril a lot. The movie also has a lot of baby poop jokes, which I could have lived without. But overall, pretty fun. 

I finished this Chan-athon with Magnificent Bodyguards (1978), a much older movie. Jackie plays an arrogant and skilled kung fu fighter. A woman crime boss, Wang Ping, hires him to escort her and her sick brother across the bandit-infested Stormy Mountains. Jackie gets James Tien for back up and they head for the hills. On the way, they pick up some allies, fight a lot of fights, and confront the king of the Stormy Mountains. There are some twists, including some that I couldn't figure out. A baby appears, who might have been Jackie in flashback, or maybe I was just flashing on Rob-B-Hood. 

Anyway, this was very conventional. Even though Jackie did fight choreography, it was pretty standard fare with a lot of wirework. And Jackie, in his period wig, could almost be anyone. He also shares screentime with a lot of people, so this doesn't seem so much like a Jackie Chan movie, more of a standard wuxia period piece.

Which is fine, I watch plenty of those. So this was a good way to wean me off of my Jackie Chan dependency.