Jackie Chan’s First Strike (1996)

Director: Stanley Tong

Cast: Jackie Chan, Jackson Lou, Annie Wu

Synopsis: A cop tries to locate a missing nuclear warhead.

Jackie Chan’s First Strike is the one in which Jackie Chan (Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, Rush Hour) performs miracles with a tall stepladder, and it’s a sequence that quite frankly boggles the mind. Chan makes it look easy, but when you see the out-takes at the end of the film you’ll see just how painful those stunts could be. He’s a Bond-style super agent in this one – the fourth in a series apparently, although you won’t need to have seen any of the previous films to follow this one. He’s after a rogue agent in possession of a nuclear warhead or something, but the plot is secondary to the action, so it doesn’t really matter. The first twenty minutes or so provide an almost constant diet of action, and later on, as the pace slows a little, the humour kicks in, particularly as Chan and his foe suck their bleeding thumbs as they do battle in a tank occupied by a hungry shark…

(Reviewed 6th February 2012)