Three the Hard Way

(1974, US, Allied Artists Pictures Co.)

Dir. Gordon Parks Jr.; Pro. Harry Bernsen; Scr. Eric Bercovici, Jerrold L. Ludwig; Cast Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Jim Kelly, Sheila Frazier, Jay Robinson, Charles McGregor, Howard Platt.

89 min.

A good ploy for blaxploitation fans: not one, not two, but three action heroes all in the same picture, which is fantastic news, but it does suggest a rather tired ploy for a short lived sub-genre. A white supremacy group kidnap Brown’s woman and plan to spike the nation’s water supply with a red liquid that will kill all the black folk (the whites will somehow be spared). That cock and bull story is supported by hoards of gratuitous gunfights, car chases, explosions and the odd bit of kung fu from Jim Kelly.

Armour of God II: Operation Condor

(1991, HK, Golden Harvest/Golden Way)

Dir. Jackie Chan; Pro. Jackie Chan, Leonard Ho Koon-cheung; Scr. Jackie Chan, Edward Tang King-chan, Fibe Ma Mei-ping; Action Dir. Jackie Chan; Cast Jackie Chan, Carol Cheng Yu-ling, Eva Cobo, Shoko Ikeda, Daniel Mintz, Aldo Sambrell, Jonathan Isgar, Mark King, Vincent Lyn, Ken Lo Hui-kwong.

92 min.

Conceived as a sequel to Jackie Chan’s most successful picture, this flies off to Spain and quickly hotfoots to the Sahara in pursuit of a secret stash of WW2 treasure. As gadget whiz Asian Hawk, Jackie is assisted in his troubles by three airheads recruited to attract crucial overseas markets: a Chinese historian (Cheng), a German heiress (Coba) and a Japanese ethnologist (Ikeda).

The set pieces are as spectacular as you would expect (a neat homage to Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. pitting Jackie, Vincent Lyn and Ken Lo against each other in a wind tunnel, plus a corker of a car chase), but the intervening filler shows signs of desperation. Part of the trouble is that anything goes, resulting in extended comedy brawling involving the crass female triumvirate, spared only by the unrelenting charm of the film’s star.

It is clear this one was destined for an international audience, starring a mostly Caucasian cast and profiting from a huge blockbuster budget unheard of for a movie of this kind (HK$90million, to be precise). The pennies are evidently up there on the screen: the locations shine, the sets extravagant, and the action is wild, yet the story convolutes and gets out of hand, eventually involving a wheelchair-bound Nazi and some Africans who also want their share of the treasure.

The thrills are there, and although this is a case of style over substance, the overall experience is more fulfilling than the first.

AKA: Operation Condor: Armour of God 2; Operation Eagle; Project Eagle: Superfly