The 32 greatest Jackie Chan movie moments
Apr. 19, 2024He’s fought with ladders, Lego, fans, and sans clothes and shoes
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Though Chan exudes masculine toughness, he is also a comedian who isn’t above getting people laughing at his expense. In fact, that’s one of his staple features. In many of Chan’s greatest moments, he is usually the underdog operating at a disadvantage. The thrill of his work is watching Chan’s characters overcome novel obstacles. Not only do these challenges make us root for Chan even more (and maybe laugh along the way), but it makes his work so much more memorable than other action heroes beating up nameless henchmen in empty hallways.
In celebration of Jackie Chan’s iconic career, below we collect 32 of the greatest moments of his career.
32. Fighting the Dragon (Enter the Dragon)
Before he was an international superstar, Jackie Chan was just a no-name evil henchman who crossed paths with the one and only Bruce Lee. Early in his career, Chan worked in Lee’s sole Hollywood production Enter the Dragon, working as both a stuntman and one of many goons that Lee had to wipe out; he’s the one Bruce Lee holds by the hair in the underground brawl. In a handful of retrospective interviews, Chan humorously recalls being legitimately hurt by Lee during filming. Upon the director yelling “cut,” Chan admits he milked the pain just to get attention from a genuinely apologetic Bruce Lee.
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Arguably Jackie Chan’s best trait as a movie star is that he’s willing to get incredibly silly. In The Accidental Spy, Chan plays an exercise equipment salesman named Yuen who gets caught up in a convoluted plot that lands him in Istanbul. While still naked from a bathhouse visit, Yuen is chased through the busy streets with barely even a towel on. While Yuen tries his best to keep his modesty, bad guys who want his head make it really hard for him to keep his hands in place. The Accidental Spy isn’t one of Chan’s best movies, but it’s undeniably one of his most fun.
With his career on the rise in early 1980, Jackie Chan took his place both in front of and behind the camera as the director of the wuxia comedy The Young Master. Midway through the movie, Chan - as the main character Dragon Lung - is challenged to a duel, with Chan using only an oversized hand fan as a weapon. While the choreography hews closer to an old school style of Chinese filmmaking, Chan’s overall playful vibe and unbelievable coordination foreshadows what the man would deliver later on in his career. In the 1998 documentary Jackie Chan: My Story, Chan revealed that filming the scene took more than 120 takes.
Almost 15 years after his star-making 1978 film Drunken Master, Jackie Chan reprised his role of real-life master Wong Fei-hung. Late into Legend of the Drunken Master, Wong Fei-hung crosses paths with “John,” a taekwondo expert whose powerful kicks intimidate Wong Fei-hung. (The role was played by Ken Lo, a champion taekwondo practitioner who became a member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team and even worked as Chan’s personal bodyguard.) Ken Lo impressively holds his own in the movie, delivering stunning kicks that even someone like Jackie Chan can’t seem to shake off. It’s simply one of Chan’s best fight scenes, on levels both technical and artistic.
In the early 1990s, Jackie Chan was known only to audiences across Asia and hardcore movie buffs with Laserdisc copies of Drunken Master. But with his 1995 film Rumble in the Bronx, Jackie Chan truly made his journey to the west in a riotous action flick that properly introduced Chan to the rest of the world. It’s fitting, then, that Rumble in the Bronx is all about Chan playing a Hong Kong cop who visits New York for his uncle’s wedding, only to run into the gang scum of the city. In one of his most memorable fight scenes, Chan makes mincemeat out of hoodlums by using their own dingy hideout against them. Ever see a guy use a refrigerator as a weapon? Thanks to Jackie Chan, now we can.
In the early 2000s, both Jackie Chan and Jet Li enjoyed international fame as the world’s preeminent martial arts movie stars. In 2008, the year that China played host for the summer Olympics, the two stars teamed up in the Hollywood blockbuster The Forbidden Kingdom. While its story bizarrely focuses on a time-displaced American teenager from the 21st century, the movie simply invites Chan and Li to do what they do best, even if their highly anticipated collaboration doesn’t live up to either of their reputations.
Instead of elaborating on what the particulars of this scene means - it’s basically just Jackie Chan fighting more bad guys, using his Drunken Boxing technique - allow me to instead detail a personal story. Some years back, I was talking to an office coworker who wasn’t very acquainted with foreign action movies, and definitely unfamiliar with Jackie Chan in his prime era. When I told them to go on YouTube and watch this fight scene, they were speechless. It’s simply that good, and the perfect introduction to what makes Chan so special to anyone who hasn’t seen him at his best before.
Who Am I? is a mostly rudimentary Jackie Chan picture in which the star plays an amnesiac special forces agent trying to piece together his real identity. While not the best or worst that Jackie Chan has to offer, one of its most impressive setpieces is a foot chase/fight scene on the streets of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. At one point, Jackie Chan loses his combat boots, making his toesie woesies vulnerable to stomps and forcing him to try on whatever spills out of a shoemaker’s store. A recurring motif in Jackie Chan’s work is that his characters must always overcome some disadvantage, creating novel opportunities for heroism and humor all at once.
The late Brad Allan, an Australian martial artist and choreographer, was the first person of non-Asian descent to join the illustrious Jackie Chan Stunt Team. He would later go on to work on major Hollywood movies, including The Chronicles of Riddick, Avatar, and Marvel’s Shang-Chi. He plays an onscreen role in Chan’s 1999 action rom-com Gorgeous, as the villain’s chief muscle. Late in the movie, Brad Allan goes mano e mano with Jackie Chan in a technically dazzling, no-nonsense matchup that proves the basics doesn’t mean an absence of style.
Jackie Chan’s filmography is full of movies where the man takes on bad guys in restaurants. It’s kind of a recurring thing, actually. But in Police Story 2, Chan is in prime form when he takes on triad gangsters in an eatery, making use of the restaurant’s furniture and dishes as weapons. Again, for Jackie Chan, this is a Tuesday. But there is such an abundance of playfulness and creativity throughout the whole thing, it’s hard not to pull up a chair and grab a plate.
While there are quite a few suspenseful fight scenes in Crime Story, its dark and serious tone is a strong contrast to that of his more comical Police Story films. In Crime Story, Jackie Chan plays a repentant detective desperate for his next case - the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman - to make up for past mistakes. After a tense fight above a theater, Chan’s character starts suspecting that his own assigned partner (played by Kent Cheng) knows more than he’s willing to let on. Chan is celebrated as a physical performer, but it really doesn’t take much to tell an interesting story. In this case, Chan’s suddenly cynical body language, including his hands in his pockets, says more than flying fists could.
By 1989, Jackie Chan had matured enough as a filmmaker to make Miracles. In this loving homage to Golden Era Hollywood and inspired by the films Lady for a Day (1933) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961), Chan plays a country boy who arrives in Hong Kong and unwittingly
becomes a gang lord. With Miracles, Chan exerts all his muscles as actor, director, and choreographer, flexing his talents in the movie’s inventive climax inside a rope factory. Brutal as it is buoyant, Miracles shows off all the ways that make Chan so special.
Crime Story is loaded with explosive violence - and we mean that quite literally - but what makes it so irremovable from Jackie Chan’s oeuvre is that it isn’t just another movie where Chan beats up bad guys. Late into Crime Story, Chan is betrayed by his partner who leaves him for dead at the bottom of a big ship. With no easy way back up, Chan uses both his brains and his grit, and not just his fists, to rise back to the surface. Crime Story is truly one of Jackie Chan’s finest films, showing off its leading man as more than just a comedic butt-kicker.
Jackie Chan doesn’t always have to be throwing down against goons to entertain. In Sammo Hung’s Wheels on Meals - which kung fu movie aficionados will say is one of Jackie Chan’s all-time best films (and they’re correct) - Chan plays a food truck server in Barcelona who takes orderswhile riding a skateboard!Whowouldn’twant a hamburger and Coke delivered by Jackie Chan on a skateboard? The vibes in Wheels on Meals are immaculate, and it’s not just because the kung fu is top notch. It’s because it lets Jackie Chan simply be the coolest guy you’ve ever seen.
On a luxury cruise ship that has its own movie theater, private investigator Ryo Saeba (Jackie Chan) squares off against bigger men twice his size. But that’s fine. With Bruce Lee’s The Game of Death playing on the big screen behind him, Ryo channels the spirit of “The Dragon” to overcome his enemies. While the choreography and comedy are dependably solid, it’s the mere fact that Chan pays direct homage to Bruce Lee that really makes the scene so wonderful, and wonderfully hilarious.
Jackie Chan is no stranger to falling from dangerous heights. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t impressive, and downright frightening, every time he does it. In his period action-comedy Project A, Jackie Chan’s character Dragon Lung falls from a clocktower 60-feet high straight to the ground, with just two awning canopies slowing down his fall. To watch it in motion is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Behind the scenes, Chan spent weeks building up his courage to shoot the stunt. He performed it three times, and almost broke his neck while doing so.
While there have been several movies based on the Street Fighter video games, none of them match up to the hilarious accuracy of Jackie Chan’s City Hunter. Late into the movie, in a luxury cruise ship under siege by terrorists, Chan’s character Ryo Saeba is cornered by the terrorists in the ship’s arcade parlor. After being thrown into the machines, the electrical shock induces a bizarre fever dream sequence that turns Chan’s imagination into a “real-life” game of Street Fighter. Amidst all the hadokens and shoryukens, the icing on the cake is when Jackie Chan rises up in impeccable Chun-Li cosplay. Truly, Jackie Chan has never looked better.
Let Jackie Chan inspire us all to maintain good cardio. In the action classic Police Story, Jackie Chan rises to the occasion as an up-and-coming police officer whose relentlessness makes him a star in the precinct. One of Chan’s most impressive stunts in the movie involves a moving, full-sized passenger bus. Not only does Chan catch up to it on foot, he manages to make his way into it from the outside with just an umbrella. Scored to the rocking guitars of the movie’s theme song (which Chan sings too), it’s an inspiring moment that let us know for sure just what kind of action star Jackie Chan was going to be.
You know it’s a big movie moment when Michael Bay rips it off. In Police Story, a dilapidated shanty town occupying space on a steep hill goes up in smoke when Jackie Chan (riding shotgun) chases bad guys through its streets… and buildings, and homes, and general infrastructure keeping the whole thing in place. While Michael Bay cranked up the volume on his version seen in Bad Boys II, Chan proves that you don’t have to blow up the whole screen for audiences to feel blown away.
Jackie Chan is good with his fists, but sometimes he’s better with his wit. In Rush Hour, still one of Jackie Chan’s most financially successful and popular Hollywood movies, Chan, playing a Hong Kong officer assigned to a kidnapping case in Los Angeles, ends up in a scuzzy pool hall no thanks to his assigned partner, Carter (Chris Tucker). With Carter getting information, Chan is left on his own. After an unfortunate use of some very poorly chosen words, Chan starts brawling with the other patrons. Chan insists repeatedly he doesn’t want trouble, and when they’re laid out, he reiterates, “I said I don’t want trouble!” Offensive? Sure. But Rush Hour is all about how hilarious cultural differences can be.
With Armour of God in 1986, Jackie Chan strove to cement himself as a true crossover action star beyond simply playing kung fu masters. Taking a page from the Indiana Jones series, Chan fashions himself into a treasure hunter who dives deep into the world’s forgotten corners for riches. Late into Armour of God, Jackie Chan does battle with not just monastic cultists, but deadly warrior women who look as if they leapt from a comic book. While the action is predictably delightful, it’s the boldness of Chan’s creativity - to fight foes who weren’t just more kung fu masters and faceless gang members - that really makes an action star feel larger than life.
Jackie Chan’s expertise for balancing comedy with danger takes center stage in one of the most thrilling scenes in Armour of God II: Operation Condor, released in 1991. In an underground Nazi base, Jackie Chan battles atop see-sawing platforms that come dangerously close to crushing his head. While the action choreography is expectedly on-point - Jackie Chan in his prime could nevernotdeliver the goods - the best moment of the whole thing isn’t the fighting, but a temporary truce Chan makes with his enemies to safely get off the thing.
Jackie Chan can do so many things, but even Sammo Hung knows that sometimes all audiences want is to see stuff explode. At the end of Mr. Nice Guy, Jackie Chan’s character (also named Jackie, amusingly) hijacks agiantmining truck belonging to the movie’s scummy villain, a drug lord. After Jackie crushes his exotic car collection, he drives the thing straight into his piece of crap postmodern mansion, demolishing every useless brick and tasteless decor to bits until the entire place just goes KA-BOOM. Not all of Jackie Chan’s movies end in fisticuffs, but they almost all end in a blaze of glory.
It’s simply one of the most iconic pieces of action choreography in movie history. While Jackie Chan has often used construction tools as improvised weapons (see also: Mr. Nice Guy), it’s in the fourth Police Story sequel - released as First Strike in the U.S. - that Chan fends off enemies using the folding tables, scaffolding, and of course, tall steel ladders around him. While the whole scene is great, the money shot is when Chan uses a ladderas a neck shield, spinning the thing over his shoulders so lightning fast. Surely Chan must have hurt himself while filming it. (He did. Watch the blooper reel.)
Who doesn’t love a good bar fight? In Project A, director and star Jackie Chan turns up the volume by pitting two entirely different police forces against each other, with Chan caught up in the middle of it all with a rival (played by Yuen Biao). While the scene is memorably chaotic, with bar stools flying, mugs and glasses breaking, and blood and beer spilling everywhere, Chan still steals the show in a comic performance where his face hilariously expresses unbelievable pain. Where most action stars try to look tough and invincible, Jackie Chan isn’t afraid to show how much stuff like this hurts.
Not only is Benny “The Jet” Urquidez one of the most decorated professional fighters of all time, he’s also pitted against Jackie Chan in one of the actor’s most legendary onscreen fights of all time. In the climax of Wheels on Meals, Jackie Chan stands up to Urquidez (in the role of a nameless bad guy) and the two engage in one-on-one combat. While Chan has faced off with many legendary martial artists, Urquidez is on a whole other level. (See his roundhouse kick that blows out the candles? That was real.) In the end, Chan’s character realizes what it will take to best his opponent. Ironically, it’s not to treat it as a do-or-die scenario, but just another “training session” as a way to relax his mind. No one can feel relaxed when squaring off with “The Jet,” but Jackie Chan makes it look so simple.
The allure of movie stars is that, for one glorious moment somewhere in their lifetimes, they’ve assured their immortality. For Jackie Chan, his permanence came in Police Story. At the end of the movie, for his character to catch a bad guy on the ground floor of a busy shopping mall, Chan leaps off and slides down a gold metal pole adorned with electrical lights. (Not before letting out a yell, which is the result of Chan legitimately feeling all the adrenaline in his body.) As Chan slides down glass shatters and lights snap and blow out, creating a sensation of violent magnificence that is so dazzling, and downright horrifying, to watch happen. The stunt alone is proof of Chan’s iron determination to put on the greatest show you’ve ever seen. While many other movie stars have tried to outdo Chan, and some have, there is still only one Jackie Chan.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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