and endearing stuff. The movie was another made for Golden Harvest. Jackie had remained on the company’s board till 1998, enduring a slump in HK cinema, but had left when his commitments in America became too great.
For the next two years he would concentrate on Hollywood pictures. First came Rush Hour 2, a predictable sequel set just after the first, with Chan and Tucker holidaying in Hong Kong. A bomb in the US Embassy leads them first to a triad boss and then on to an international counterfeiting gang based in Las Vegas. It was a terribly flawed production. Jackie complained there wasn’t sufficient time to prepare spectacular stunts, while Tucker was allowed free rein to ad-lib with very little quality control. Nevertheless, on a $90 million budget, it took a whopping $226 million, with Chan’s $15 million raising him into Hollywood’s upper echelons.
Next, he’d intended to make Nosebleed, which would have seen him as a window-cleaner at the World Trade Centre who gets involved in a terrorist attack. On September 11th, 2001, he was supposed to be filming on the roof but the script was late so filming was cancelled. As we all know, many things were cancelled that day.
He instead moved on to The Tuxedo where he played the chauffeur of a rich secret agent. He’s an Ordinary Joe but, when he puts on his boss’s cybernetic dinner-suit, he becomes an all-action dancer and fighter, joining agent Jennifer Love Hewitt in a struggle against a corporate villain who intends to add a weird chemical to the world’s water supply that will dehydrate everyone, thus boosting sales of his bottled water. It was an odd movie for Jackie, with not much in the way of martial arts or live action stunts. He’d didn’t usually rely on CG SFX. But then he didn’t usually impersonate James Brown onstage either, and that was very funny indeed.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Chan now delivered a sequel to Shanghai Noon, entitled Shanghai Knights. Here robbers steal the Great Seal of China, in the process killing its guardian, Jackie’s dad. Now the Sheriff of Carson City, Jackie re-teams with Owen Wilson and sets off for London in search of the seal and revenge. Another day, another hit.
After an extended jokey cameo in The Twins Effect, a Buffy-style vampire romp starring Hong Kong Cantopop duo The Twins, Chan moved on to The Medallion, where enormous power will be granted to anyone who can meld together the separated halves of a mysterious medal. Julian Sands was the evil Snakehead with domination on his mind, while Chan was a cop attempting to foil his plot, with the aid of Interpol agents Lee Evans and Claire Forlani.
2004 was another big year. After another cameo in Enter The Phoenix, he starred in a pricey re-make of Jules Verne’s Around The World In 80 Days, the story being re-jigged to make Chan’s Passepartout the hero, rather than Steve Coogan’s Phineas Fogg. Here Chan is a good guy thief, attempting to return a priceless jade buddha to his Chinese village. Wicked warlord Karen Mok (who earlier appeared with Chan in The King Of Comedy, The Twins Effect and Enter The Phoenix) has other ideas. Consequently endangered, Chan seizes on Fogg’s offer to race around the globe and takes the chance to exhibit his incredible agility and chuckle-raising mugging. Other friends would pop up throughout, Sammo Hung being one, Owen Wilson another.
Following this came a long-awaited addition to the Police Story cannon, New Police Story, the first without Maggie Cheung as May. He’d then