Jackie Chan

“If you sit on the road, face what you still have to walk and turn your back on what you have already walked”, says a well-known Chinese proverb. A thought that Jackie Chan has fulfilled to the letter, an artist for whom there are no challenges that can be compared to the most difficult yet. Able to overcome the trail of a myth like Bruce Lee , when he was considered his successor, he broke all the molds of martial arts cinema with his own style that mixes action and humor with surprising results at the box office. Behind the cameras, he plans spectacular scenes of enormous risk that he himself later stars in, wasting energy and adrenaline, to the admiration of locals and strangers. But reaching superstar popularity has taken blood, sweat and tears.

As a child, Jackie dreamed of being a cowboy and one day riding a horse in the Wild West, but until that actually happened, life was not exactly rosy. Due to lack of resources, his parents were about to sell him for 26 dollars to an English doctor, when he was born in Hong Kong (1954). At the age of seven he found his bones at the Peking Opera School. They were ten hard years that would mark him for the rest of his life. Under strict discipline, he learned all the acrobatic displays shown in today’s movies from him. He also learned mime and acting techniques that would soon lead him to his film debut with Little and Wong Tin Bar (1962). Although he would have to leave the Peking Opera to do something really serious as a choreographer in Policewoman.(1971). It was an ephemeral moment, since then she had no choice but to work at anything to put the bread in her mouth.

Chan has always been characterized by his tenacity. So he insisted on participating in films where the greatest were. There were few seconds to deal with the legend, Bruce Lee, who sends him thrown out of a window with a sovereign kick in Furia Oriental ; but there he was. Little thing… until his time definitely came. In 1978 he attracted attention as the protagonist in The Serpent in the Eagle’s Shadow , and repeated his success the following year with The Drunken Monkey in the Tiger’s Eye., two titles that demystify the traditional line of the subgenre. In these roles he shows the more casual side of himself and renews the art of kung fu with new techniques. He already envisions that Chan who rejects doubles and incredible special effects – “the special effect is me”, he often says. The public welcomed the new star of him with open arms.

In the last two decades Chan has not stopped reaping successes. They have multiplied between jumping from one building to another, fast-paced chases, kicks and punches even in the identity card, all seasoned with large doses of humor. Some films are The Pirates of the China Sea (1983), The Three Dragons (1987), Armor of God (The Armor of God) or Police Story , where he almost lost his life when he fell 12 meters from a tree during filming. In them, Chan had become a one-man band that produces, directs, acts and coordinates the choreography. In addition, he quickly and budgets to blush the American industry.

It is precisely the North American market its great thorn. The Chicago Fury and The Protector did poorly, because they seemed more suited to Clint Eastwood than Chan’s Asian image. Things have gone better with his latest works: Rush Hour (1998) and Shanghai Kid. From East to West  (2000). In the latter he plays an imperial guard from the Forbidden City who travels to the American West to rescue a princess. Perhaps it is a good omen and he finds the definitive path towards that horizon that this versatile and peculiar man of international cinema dreamed of as a child.