Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. With Jackie Chan starring in the upcoming summer blockbuster Karate Kid: Legends, let’s go back to those years when the Asian action god finally broke through in America – and how the Weinstein brothers were partially responsible for that.
When Quentin Tarantino gave Jackie Chan the Lifetime Achievement honor at the 1995 MTV Movie Awards, the brothers Weinstein most likely thought, Now is the perfect time to unload those Jackie Chan titles we bought in the early ‘90s.
With cinema’s new bad boy singing the Hong Kong star’s praises, they knew America would be in the mood for a Jackie Chan invasion. (New Line Cinema immediately jumped on the distro bandwagon by re-releasing his 1995 film Rumble in the Bronx a year later in the States.) It was an invasion Chan tried to start in the ‘80s, appearing in such stateside productions as The Cannonball Run movies and his own failed star vehicles The Big Brawl and The Protector.
Chan may have failed to cross over during the brawny, brolic era of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis, but the films he made back home – complete with death-defying stunts and badass, humorously choreographed martial-arts brawls, all done by him – only made his legend grow. Truth be told, several Chan movies found their way over these parts, either on revival-house big screens or home-video shelves. Supercop, the first film distributed via little bro Bob’s Dimension Films wing, was released a few years back in several markets. But, in true Weinstein fashion, Supercop got the recut treatment before it hit theaters.
Technically the third installment in his popular Police Story franchise, Supercop has Chan’s rule-breaking hero Chan Ka-kui (he’s Kevin in the U.S. version) joining forces with Chinese policewoman ”Jessica” Yang Chien-Hua (Michelle Khan, aka future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh) to take down a drug cartel. But it wasn’t Harvey Scissorhands doing all the nips and tucks this time around; those were supervised by Chan. “I saw it, and then I recut it,” Chan said in 1996. Chan and Yeoh redubbed their characters, while Chan decided to cut out ten minutes of footage and add a new score from American composer Jeff McNeely, as well as a soundtrack that includes a theme song from Devo and a Warren G/Adina Howard rap number whose video features an appearance by Chan. As Chan said, “Now I like it very much.”
Directed with gonzo glee with Golden Harvest icon Stanley Tong (who also directed Rumble), re-releasing Supercop was a good fit for Miramax and Dimension. It grossed $16 million domestically and would later be released on laserdisc via The Criterion Collection. It was a welcome change from the years of chauvinistic action flicks where men primarily saved the day. It featured not only the world’s most fleet-footed action star, but paired him up with the leggy-but-lethal Yeoh, who perfectly matched Chan’s flair for superhuman high kicks and screwball sight gags. Supercop proved that, in the world of Hong Kong action cinema, women can also kick your ass. (The following August, Dimension re-released on home video Supercop 2, which starred Yeoh and featured a cameo from Chan, and Police Story, Chan’s straight-faced 1993 vehicle.)
LIttle did U.S. audiences know that ass-kicking dames were also a rarity in Chan’s filmography. Chan usually preferred to have his female co-stars as damsels-in-distress. (The Police Story movies often had Chan’s character saving his annoying girlfriend, played by a pre-In the Mood for Love Maggie Cheung, from peril.) This was most exemplified in his next Dimension-distributed film, 1997’s Operation Condor, a whittled-down 1991 sequel to his 1986 Indiana Jones knockoff Armour of God. (Both films were directed by Chan.)
The UN hires Chan’s treasure hunter Jackie/Condor to locate a secret base in the Sahara that contains 240 tons of gold. He’s paired up with three women – an African geography expert Ada (Carol “Do Do” Cheng), a young German informant (Eva Cobo de Garcia), and a Japanese woman (Shoko Ikeda) they pick up during the expedition – who are more like grating props than equal on-screen partners. (Critic/Hong Kong movie expert Andy Klein called them “a worse bunch of screaming ninnies than you’ll find in any Bond film.”) There are several scenes where Chan rips the towel off whichever gal is wearing it, just so the baddies who have them at gunpoint can be easily distracted. But Chan’s treatment of women wasn’t the only problematic thing about Condor. Muslims didn’t approve of how the movie portrayed them as bumbling baddies who are clearly not of Middle Eastern descent. After scoring big with Supercop, Condor was a letdown for Dimension, only grossing $10 million around here.
It seemed that Dimension was almost out of the Jackie Chan business – until Rush Hour dropped. His East-meets-West buddy comedy/franchise launcher with comedian Chris Tucker was one of the biggest hits of 1998, which means the Weinsteins had a few more Chan imports worth releasing now that Chan was officially beginning his new life as a major player in Hollywood. In 1999, Dimension gave us the 1992 Tsui Hark-Ringo Lam comic actioner Twin Dragons, where Chan played two separated-at-birth twin brothers – a piano-playing prodigy and a street-smart mechanic – who reunite, fall for each other’s girl, and go to war with a dangerous Hong Kong gang. Despite more how-did-dude-not-die thrills (it’s still wild seeing him power walk over a moving car), Dragons only made $8 million domestically.
As Chan launched another Hollywood buddy-comedy franchise in 2000 with Shanghai Noon (where he teamed up with Owen Wilson), Dimension released The Legend of Drunken Master a few months later. Originally Drunken Master II, the 1994 sequel to his star-making 1978 flick Drunken Master, Legend shows Chan as a martial arts wunderkind with a gift for getting wasted and whipping asses. A Chan import that was recut the least (Dimension deleted a scene of Chan playing crippled after downing some hardcore booze, citing it was in bad taste), Legend (which grossed $11 million domestically) is considered the most acclaimed of the bunch. “The Legend of Drunken Master may be the most kick-ass demonstration yet,” said Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum. “[Legend] showcases Chan in his impish glory, dazzling in his ability to make serious, complicated fighting look like devil-may-care fun.”
Legend was the last Chan joint Dimension released in theaters. His 2001 film The Accidental Spy was supposed to have a theatrical rollout, but it got a stateside home-video release the following year. Around this time, big bro Harvey, who was still sore about failing to snap up future Oscar-winning martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, began acquiring more high-flying period pieces. Some of them got their moments on the big screen (like the 1993 Donnie Yen actioner Iron Monkey and Zhang Yimou’s all-star 2003 epic Hero, which was number one at the box office for two straight weekends), while others went to video (like the 2001 wuxia fantasy Zu Warriors, which starred Crouching castmate Ziyi Zhang).
Right up until you-know-what, Weinstein was still trying to collect awards, acclaim and box-office receipts by getting the rights to martial-arts classics and collaborating with Asian movie moguls like Chan. In 2007, fresh from leaving Miramax and forming The Weinstein Company, the brothers launched an Asian film fund that would’ve produced or bought the rights to 21 theatrical releases as well as 10 straight-to-video productions to be released through its Dragon Dynasty label, co-managed by Tarantino. In 2013, the Weinstein Company announced they were planning to remake the Shaw Brothers Studio classics Come Drink with Me and The Avenging Eagle. Those remakes never happened, although I do remember receiving a DVD of Drink from Dragon Dynasty.
Looking back, it did seem like the Weinsteins saw the impending Asian-action revolution coming and wanted to be our country’s official gatekeepers for all things Asian and action-packed. While he was the head of Miramax boutique wing Rolling Thunder Pictures, Tarantino hit audiences with cult actioners from Wong Kar-Wai and Takeshi “Beat” Kitano. And during the Jackie Chanaissance, their Miramax Books wing dropped the comprehensive Asian-cinema reader Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider’s Guide to the Hollywood of the East, written by music-biz chronicler Fredric Dannen (Hit Men: Powerbrokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business) and the late writer/spirited teacher Barry Long. (Long out-of-print, you can find a copy at the Internet Archive.)
One of the few positive achievements in their tainted legacy, the Weinsteins made American audiences realize that, when it comes to action heroes, Jackie Chan and the other male and female ass-whuppers of East Asian Cinema were on a whole different level.You could say they gave America a powerful dose of yellow fever. OK, I know that sounds racist as fuck – but you know that’s the kinda outta-pocket shit Weinstein said about Chan and his brethren said behind closed doors.
Supercop and The Legend of Drunken Master are available to rent or buy, while Operation Condor, Twin Dragons and The Accidental Spy are available to stream for free. As for the uncut versions, some of them can be found over at Internet Archive.
