Miracles: Jackie Chan Does Capra

I’m a bit rundown this week/weekend, so I’ll leave you with a recommendation rather than a review (if I ever really write reviews). Go watch Jackie Chan’s Miracles (1989), an adaptation of two Capra movies by way of Hong Kong action stardom.

The subtitling on the Criterion Channel version is faltering at best. Combine that with the film’s various references to intra-Chinese linguistic, geographic, and social differences and many of the plot’s finer contours prove hard to access as a non-Cantonese or Mandarin speaker. But so what? It’s Jackie Chan. And he’s behind and in front of the camera. The film features few fights. But those it does have offer the viewer are among Chan’s best work.

Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but I do wish the broader range of his work were better appreciated in the West. We have his phenomenal, often very funny, really Jerry-Lewis-cum-Bruce Lee-esque Western Hollywood entries like the Rush Hour movies (2001-2007) and his work with Owen Wilson. But he’s nearly as effective behind the camera. Police Story (1985) anyone? He even sings the theme song (and, man, is it an earworm).

As an entertainer, Chan is a global treasure. He’s like having one of the Marx Brothers (who can do kung fu) hanging around. So, for its flaws—real or the result of bad translation—I feel, with my limited time this weekend, that it is my duty to recommend another of his films. The man is, after all, a miracle worker.