REVIEW: Armour of God

Note: The English-dubbed release from Miramax was used for this review.

Armour of God has been sitting in my Netflix queue for some time now. I remember hearing it listed on one of James Rolfe's Jackie Chan retrospectives for Cinemassacre, so I knew I simply had to check it out. About an hour and a half later and I'm not disappointed. It's not a particularly "good" movie, but man oh man is it a fun time.

The plot involves a character named Jackie Chan (shockingly portrayed by Jackie Chan), a former 80's pop-rock idol who, after quitting the band, pursued the same line of work as so many ex-musicians before him: tomb-raiding treasure hunter. A satanic cult (led by a man who looks to be cosplaying as Doctor Orpheus from The Venture Bros) wishes to possess the titular Armour of God so that they may perform vaguely unexplained acts of evil with it; in order to carry out this plan, they kidnap Jackie's former bandmate and ex-girlfriend, Lorelei (Rosamund Kwan), hoping to blackmail Jackie into retrieving the armor for them. It turns out that Jackie's OTHER former bandmate, Alan (played by Alan Tam) is now engaged to Lorelei; naturally he wants to get her back as well, so he comes to Jackie for help. The two are joined by May Bannon (Lola Forner), the daughter of a rich European Count and curator of ancient artifacts. She tags along on the journey to secure the remaining armor pieces for her father; she also is sort of Jackie's love interest, but not really.

Truthfully, the plot is sort of garbage. It meanders around all over the place and doesn't really do anything interesting. Everyone except for Jackie and Alan are totally underdeveloped, the villains are practically nonexistent, and things often don't make sense. The movie opens up with a scene ripped straight from Raiders of the Lost Arc; Jackie has to steal an artifact from a horde of natives (be prepared to hear "ooga booga" more than once during this sequence), only to escape via plane. At one point during this scene, the natives chase Jackie down a grassy mountainside on tribal toboggans. If this sounds completely ludicrous, that's because it is.

With all that said, this is not the kind of movie you watch for the plot. I knew enough about Jackie Chan going into this to know that any stunts I was about to see were a hundred percent REAL; that fact took what could be just a cheesy 80's action flick and turned it into a legitimately impressive piece of work. The last twenty or so minutes of this are comprised of one big fight scene in which Jackie fights off basically the entire evil cult within their secret mountain fortress. This and all the other action scenes (including one particularly incredible stunt at the end that I won't dare spoil) are a testament to Jackie Chan's skill as both a martial artist and an actor. This particular film is legendary for a moment that isn't even in the final cut; while filming his escape in the beginning, Jackie was to leap onto the top of a tree and ride it to the ground. Upon doing this, the branch snapped. He proceeded to fall five meters to the ground, cracking his skull (footage of the accident is actually featured in the blooper reel during the credits, so maybe skip that part if you're faint of heart). He was airlifted to the hospital and operated on; to this day, he has a plastic plug in his head and acute hearing loss in one ear. After he had recovered, he went on to take over as director and film the rest of the movie (along with countless others). It's that kind of dedication that makes Armour of God something special.

Armour of God marries the genres of kung-fu and slapstick comedy; it's a match made in heaven. Any time during the action that isn't spent gawking at some amazing display of physical prowess is spent chuckling at the great physical humor; I was honestly surprised how often I caught myself genuinely laughing at this movie. The fact that I wasn't laughing at it ironically (despite Jackie dubbing over his own voice in a dialect that would make Tommy Wiseau blush) keeps Armour of God out of the "enjoyably bad" camp and makes it just plain enjoyable. It's a goofy movie that the actors clearly had a lot of fun making; even Jackie, despite the fact that he almost literally killed himself while making it.

Armour of God is no masterpiece; it doesn't have a brilliant story or life-changing performances. What it does have is heart, and a lot of it. By all rights, this should be a bad movie; in many ways, it is. But despite all of its flaws, I was smiling pretty much the entire time. It's the cinematic equivalent of a fireworks display; quite a bit of work went into it and, while it's not particularly a deep experience, it's definitely enjoyable to watch.