KUNG FU SHOWDOWN!

Ethan Sacks:

Bruce Lee may have entered a dragon, but he left this mortal coil way too early to leave us with much more than a handful of pretty schlocky movies. There, I said it.

And Kurt, as good as Jet Li is in real life, his skills rarely translated to reel life since he agreed to a succession of Kung Fu roles over the ’80s and ’90s that were more about wire work than his real talent. His Kung Fu is strong, but it’s no match for the choreographer’s style of using ridiculous flying kicks that last three or more seconds.

And Ian, your drunken lunatic style is no match for my cold hard logic style: Sonny Chiba is a punk that got outshined by Sister Street Fighter. He does have 8th degree black eyebrows, I will give him that.

Forget that Jackie Chan would get his ass kicked by the rest of these guys in a real alleyway (maybe with the exception of Bruce Lee now because he’s dead – but only maybe). Chan has them all licked where it counts – on screen. While everybody tried to ape Bruce Lee after he died, Jackie found the perfect recipe of action and comedy, borrowing as much from Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin than any Kung Fu master. And it works – nobody has won over a greater worldwide audience than Jackie Chan.

The evidence can be seen on your DVD players. Check out the teahouse fight in Drunken Master II (retitled Legend of the Drunken Master on this side of the Pacific), where Jackie scraps his way through axe-wielding maniacs using a table and a long pole in one of the best on-screen fight sequences in movie history. He’s the ultimate alchemist – every prop is a gold mine of possibilities, as is demonstrated in that great sequence in Rumble in the Bronx, where Jackie uses pinball machines, refrigerators and shopping carts to dodge his way past charging street hooligans. Who doesn’t love a rich movie star who is willing to literally break his head in a fall doing his own stunts?

He didn’t always need props or gimmicky stunts, either, as his fights with six-time world kickboxing champion Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in Wheels on Meals and Dragons Forever (my pick for best Jackie Chan movie) are examples of how to choreograph the perfect scene without wasting time with wires.

Now that’s what I call powerful Kung Fu, bitches.