Heart of Dragon

After the Lucky Stars films, Sammo Hung wanted to direct Jackie Chan in something serious. Chan resisted, believing Hong Kong audiences would not accept him outside an action role. Hung insisted, and this is the result. Chan plays Tad, a former special forces officer now working as a detective, who dreams of working on a ship and seeing the world but has to care for his intellectually disabled older brother Dodo. Sammo Hung plays Dodo, and the performance is not sheepish but entirely exposed, with no hesitation about looking ridiculous. The first hour is almost pure drama. The action arrives in the final section, when Dodo is kidnapped, and the fight in the construction site there is among Chan's most punishing sequences of the eighties. That double structure made the film contentious: some called it two films glued together, others Chan's bravest work. Who it is for: viewers who want to see Jackie Chan outside his usual register. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fighting throughout, or who will find the depiction of disability locked in the language of its period, which it is.