Bleeding the Steel
Jackie chan is possibly the most well aged action star in history. For Jackie, being an old man in the genre just means slowing it down to everyone else’s speed. Chan at his prime was extreme. Like turning it up to eleven, extreme. Now, as an old man, he’s toning it down to ten.
Its a strange gracefulness as Chan realizes he can’t jump off a building into a helicopter (Like he did in Super Cop) or fall off a over 30 story building (Like he did in Who am I?), so now he picks up the play book form the American action heroes that worship the ground he kicks on. In the past few years of Chan making movies you’ll notice he’s picking up more guns than fist and chasing bad guys with cars instead of on his feet. I actually love the progression in the idea that a cop in his prime would not need a weapon as much as an over the hill cop.
Bleeding Steel does go one level up, however. Chan notices Amaricas push on the superhero market and adds that element to the story (as if Jackie is not already a superhero, right?)
In Bleeding Steel, Chan goes out on a limb and plays a cop… what!? Not just any cop. A speicalized supercop….what!? It’s different. The dude Jackie is going after is a true super villain using like a scinice experiment to make his blood invisible, and only the great Jackie Chan is amazing enough to stop the madness.
The movie is both speical effects driven and visual effects driven. Jackie does the basic punches and kicks but he’s not ashamed to use the advancements of technology to do the things that made him a legend in his prime. It’s actually one of the coolest things about Chan, totally admitting that if green screens and digital imaging was this good when he was doing Police Story back in the day he would have just did that instead. You can tell for sure but it still some solid action sequences because Chan is still willing to do so much himself and still can do a lot of it himself.
Visually, the movie does play like a superhero adventure blockbuster. At some point, all the main characters including Chan will wear a costume that looks like it came right out of a comic book panel, but hey, when you’re a man over sixty who can still put it on, then put it on, right?
So, when it comes down to it. The man who changed the game changes his game to a more traditional form of the action movie because he slowed down but does not what to slow down. Not the Jackie Chan we all came to idolize but still makes a great action movie.
