Gorgeous

Just saw Gorgeous, the latest Jackie Chan film. Plot wise, it’s utterly incomprehensible. But there were a couple of boxing fight scenes that were incredible.

It seems to me Jackie Chan has lost a step. Just, in his fight scenes, he seems slower. Of course, it might be just that they’re not speeding up the film anymore. But it’s not just that. In the fight scenes involving more than one person, it just looks choreographed. It’s always been choreographed, but in Gorgeous it looked more so. But yeah, the two one on one boxing scenes that were pretty amazing.

Anyway, some random info, I guess just for Henry and John: Gorgeous started out as just a Jackie Chan produced film. He wasn’t going to be in it, and there were no fight scenes in the original script. So it was just going to be a plot driven romantic comedy. Stunning. But, there were 20 minutes cut in the American release, and apparently the Hong Kong version is more coherent.

Other interesting tidbits – Shu Qi says in the making of featurette how hard it is to make movies, so she asks us not to buy pirated VCDs.

Oops.

Also, Jackie says he likes Gorgeous more than Rush Hour. He also says something interesting, how important editing is in the fight scenes, and in fact, to be good, the fighters actually need to be aware of how it’s being shot, what the next shot is, etc. He says how anyone can punch and kick, but very few action stars are aware of how to edit fight scenes, even in Hollywood.

He’s right, I think. I dunno, I just like the way Jackie Chan’s fight scenes are filmed in his Hong Kong movies way more than the way they film his fight scenes in his American movies. I’m not quite sure what it is, but yeah, it’s better.

If anyone cares.