plus jet li wrote the movie, give the martial arts guy some credit for writing a not that bad script for an action film, consideriding most action films have *beep* plots - and most of jackie chan's movies have god awful plots and acting, the films being more of a catalyst for 1 and half hours of kung fu
In the case of Jackie, he
did occasionally do films driven by plot instead of martial arts (e.g.
Heart Of The Dragon and
Crime Story), but in Asia (where his main audience is) this didn't work and his hardcore fans just didn't want to know, because, to them, 'plot' equals 'not as much of Jackie's action and/or stunts', which is what they really wanted.
Heart Of The Dragon (a drama) made only HK$1m at the box office, whereas
Police Story (an action comedy) made HK$10m; it was obvious to the Golden Harvest studio which formula was the one that generated the most money.
An unfortunate 'side venture' was his classic 1989 film
Miracles, which is now considered a classic by many of his fans (and even shows Jackie's superb abilities as a director as well as an actor), was a bit of a disappointment at the box-office because again there was too much plot to allow for much of Jackie's action (in fact, Jackie's original draft of
Miracles didn't have any fights at all, but Golden Harvest said that a Jackie film with no fights was simply not acceptable).
Always left to the mighty dollar to decide a film star's output...
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