Jumpin' Jackie Flash: `Operation Condor' Is A Gas

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XXX "Operation Condor" (aka "Armour of God II"), with Jackie Chan, Carol Cheng, Eva Cobo De Garcia, Ikeda Shoko. Directed by Chan, from a script by Chan and Edward Tang. Auburn Cinema 17, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Mountlake 9, Puyallup 6, SeaTac Mall, Totem Lake, Valley drive-in, Varsity. 90 minutes. "PG" - Parental guidance advised because of violence, sensuality.

If you're a regular at the Varsity's Thursday-night "Festival Hong Kong" series, this Jackie Chan movie is old news. Under its original title, "Armour of God II: Operation Condor," and in its original language, it played here in 1993, 1994 and 1995.

Along with "Drunken Master II," it's one of the reasons The New Yorker called Chan "the most popular film actor in the world" two years ago. Originally released overseas in 1991, it's a sequel to Chan's 1986 smash, "Armour of God," which out-grossed "E.T." in Japan.

Dubbed into English and retitled "Operation Condor," it demonstrates that Chan may be the best director of his own movies - especially the comic aspects. The daredevil prologue, in which he escapes from murderous natives after removing gargantuan jewels from one of their statues, is a hilarious chase spectacle worthy of comparison with Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances."

Perhaps more than any other Chan movie, this one suggests that he's most at home being a clown. The lengthy credits sequence at film's end, full of bloopers and misfired stunts, demonstrates his robust good humor even in the face of painful miscalculations that leave him with a limp and a flattened nose.

The picture's midsection suggests a mixture of James Bond and Indiana Jones, complete with a playful parody of John Barry's music for the former and a Nazi-treasure plot lifted from "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Chan and Edward Tang's script concerns a United Nations attempt to use secret agent Chan (code name Condor) to stop terrorists from finding 240 tons of gold, which German soldiers buried beneath the Sahara during World War II. Three women, including a blonde who spends a lot of screen time in a towel, join his team.

The story, as usual, is the flimsiest of excuses for a series of over-the-top stunts and fight scenes, most of them enhanced by bone-crunching sound effects and super-swift editing. Yet there are enough genuine stunts to take your breath away, and none have been enhanced by computerized effects.

The wind-tunnel finale is a show stopper, preceded by a motorcycle pursuit through a market that's worth compiling in a film about great chase scenes. Chan manages to choreograph a collection of upside-down cars that take on an unlikely life of their own, and he creates an entire suspense sequence that's mostly done with mirrors.

Beautifully timed as all this stuff is, his reliance on an out-of-control machine gun threatens to unravel a couple of sequences, and his exploitation of racial stereotypes is regrettable.

The heavily caricatured Arab villains in "Operation Condor" have drawn a protest from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which is calling attention to the fact that "Operation Condor" has been released by Miramax, which belongs to Disney, which previously offended the ADC with "Aladdin," "Kazaam" and "Father of the Bride II."

It's an unfortunate (and dated) aspect of the movie, although Disney had nothing to do with the film's production, which took place in Hong Kong during the Gulf War.

The Varsity's next "Festival Hong Kong" night is July 31, when the theater will show something old (1988's "The Big Heat") and something brand new (1997's "Young and Dangerous III"). Neither stars Jackie Chan, but you can be first on your block to check out the latter's star, Cheng Yee Kin.