The Legend of Drunken Master 1994

Jackie Chan makes a sequel to Drunken Master, sixteen years later, and still tries to pass himself off as a teenager. Attitude goes a long way, and Jackie plays almost every role with the same tried-and-true blend of youthful naïveté and cheerful exuberance, but there's no denying he's a middle-aged man here and it's a little awkward to pretend otherwise. He's nine years older than Anita Mui, for instance, who plays his feisty stepmother, and looks every bit of it.

Still, no matter his age, he can deliver action with all the energy of a fresh-faced youngster, and Drunken Master II gives him multiple occasions to do so. Against the scaffold of a flimsy plot (the bad guys want to steal precious artifacts and ship them off to England), he finds a worthy cause to fight for and a horde of physically-capable antagonists to fight against. And fight they do, in a variety of styles and settings, with the titular art of drunken boxing often teased and then quickly withdrawn. Chan's father, it seems, does not approve of drinking and Jackie's fighting form is at its best when he's genuinely intoxicated. That leads to a winking tug-of-war with the audience, understandably eager to see the methods promised by the title, which ultimately pays off in a jumbo-sized climax in which the star's hidden powers (and legendary tolerance levels) are fully revealed at last.

The non-combat scenes can be exhausting, packed as they are with bad comedy and superficial characters, but kung fu action is the real draw and Jackie's physical presence in that respect is undeniable. I wish they'd have done less wire work and focused more on Jackie Chan being Jackie Chan (as his immediate follow-up, 1995's Rumble in the Bronx, did so very well), and both points seem to have been contentious during production. Chan clashed with director Lau Kar-leung, with the latter walking off the set before filming the climactic fight sequence, and found himself a more like-minded director for Rumble.