Jackie Chan returns as Condor in search of lost Nazi gold. If only all action movies could be this fun!

##Look out Indiana Jones, we’ve got Jackie now

[[operationcondor]]
I remember seeing this as the second movie of a Jackie Chan
double feature playing with [[Project A: II]]. This oneis an interesting
cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Charlie Chaplain.

The story begins (after a lengthy introduction that pokes fun at the
Indiana Jones movies) with Condor getting an assignment to recover a cache
of Nazi Gold for the United Nations. If he successfully gets the gold, he
keeps 1% for himself. 1% doesn’t sound like much until he finds out that
he’s searching for 640 million dollars worth! So he agrees to take the
job. His patron then gives him the only clue available as to how to
retrieve the gold: an oddly shaped key.

All Condor knows for sure is that the gold is somewhere in the Sahara desert.

For those of you who have seen his recent North American Releases “Rumble
in the Bronx”, [[Supercop]], or “First Strike”, this movie will be quite a surprise. These movies aren’t really [[Jackie Chan]] movies (for those of
you long time fans, you know what I mean). Although they are all quite
fun, each of them was written, produced and directed by someone else.
Jackie’s big creative input on these movies was in the fight choreography
and stunt work. His best efforts have always been when he had complete
control over the production of a movie (see [[Project A]] and [[Project A: II]]
for a couple of great examples).

Jackie wrote, produced, directed and starred in this one, so there’s much
more of his trademark action, humor, stunts and fight choreography.

There are several action set pieces in this film worthy of note. The first is
a chase that has Jackie on a motorcycle and a bunch of Nazi bad guys in
black cars. The scene climaxes with a great stunt where Jackie rides his
motorcycle off a ramp on a dock, releasing the bike, and latching onto a
cargo net suspended about a hundred feet above the water while the cars
that are chasing him fly off the dock into the water. For my money,
however, the stunt he pulls off earlier in the chase while hanging from the
rafters of a warehouse is one of the greatest ever put on film. It’s too hard to describe here, but see the movie and you’ll know which one I’m
talking about.

The finale takes place in a wind tunnel where Jackie is fighting with a
couple of Nazi thugs. Friends of his are at the controls of the wind
tunnel fans, and he uses these to help him defeat his opponents. I don’t
want to ruin it for you, but it’s a real hoot!!