Armour of God

Long xiong hu di; action comedy, Hong Kong, 1986; D: Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang, S: Jackie Chan, Alan Tam, Rosamund Kwan, Maria Dolores Forner

Adventurer Jackie steals valuable pieces of a knight armour - known as "Armour of God" - from an African tribe, which he then decides to sell due to financial troubles. However, a mysterious cult regards the armour from the Crusads as holy and wants it to rule the World. Thus, they kidnap Jackie's friend Laura in order to exchange it for the armour. He goes to Europe to their hideout in a tunnel system in a cave and rescues Laura.

One of Jackie Chan's lesser films, adventure action comedy with too little humor and real adventure charm, "Armour of God" became a huge box office success back in its time, ironically because the Hong Kong audience found the locations in Croatia and Slovenia to be "exotic", which even spanned a sequel, but today few things in this clumsy and chaotic film hold the test of time. As with most of Chan's film, the dialogues and the story are the weak link, since they are too random and just an excuse for action and battle sequences, whereas the characters remain ordinary, though in his best achievements that didn't matter when he reached a certain level of 'tour-de-force' martial-arts stunts, except that this isn't one of his best examples. However, even in this weaker edition, Chan's stunts are still amazing and better than many others (for instance, the motorcycle chase through the city which reminds of his better days) but too sparse to really hold attention through the whole story. They simply are not half as funny or imaginative as they should have been to overshadow the blatant screenplay. The opening is a fine spoof of Indiana Jones: on the ruins of some castle, Jackie is confronted by an African tribe. He gives them a beer can, and demonstrates that it's something good by opening his beer can and drinking from it. A tribe member opens the beer can, but a red smoke starts coming out of it, causing enough commotion for Jackie to escape. The battle in the cave castle featuring four female warriors or Jackie threatening to ignite dynamite strapped around himself to scare off the monks manage to regain the film's quality and end on a fun and satisfying note. As with most Chan's films, this one is also missing the final act, some sort of conclusion, since the armour from the title seems to be forgotten in all the battle and action at the end, yet with such excitement, one gets to forgive the film's flaws and just enjoy its positive virtues. 

Grade:++