Word: kong
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...kill each other when it's over," says Jackie Chan as the Drunken Master Lu Yan to Jet Li's Silent Monk in the new Asian-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom. But when these honored veterans of Hong Kong martial-arts movies get into fighting mode, it's an open question as to whether they'll survive till the end of the shoot. (Chan ends each of his films with gruesome outtakes of the injuries he suffered doing his stunts.) For all the safety precautions taken, the two stars still have to give every fiber of their disciplined, battered...
...that these men lacked the guts to put themselves in danger but that they worked in a system in which that sort of bravado wasn't necessary or even allowed. Hong Kong saw action realism as a badge of honor; Hollywood was the fantasy factory. And its action-film stars were such valuable commodities, they had to be handled like preemies. The studios were breeding these men for 20-to-30-year careers. Let them perform their most daring stunts? Nah, we have people who do that...
...working in the direct-to-DVD subbasement, or they have retired to government service. And Chan, 30 years after he became an East Asian star with Drunken Master, still has a two-continent career: Cantonese-language films at home, the Rush Hour movies here. Li, who became a Hong Kong superstar with the Once upon a Time in China series, segued to the West with hit movies in Hollywood (Romeo Must Die) and France (Fearless...
...Chan went to live and learn at a draconian martial-arts school. By 11, Li was the star of China's junior wushu team; in 1974 he performed on the White House lawn for President Nixon. So Chan's and Li's real ages, in Hong Kong action-movie years, are about 108 and 90, respectively. It's amazing that these guys can lift a fork, let alone a foot...
When sound came in, Hollywood substituted talk for action. And when action films returned in the '70s (in part because of the success of Bruce Lee's Hong Kong epics), the stuntman system was firmly in place. Most stars of today's Hollywood action pictures, cosseted in visual effects, barely need to exert themselves...