Zui quan [Drunken Master] (1978)

(In French, On TV, July 2019) I watched a lot of Jackie Chan movies in the mid-to-late nineties, but still missed a few—which mean that I can now enjoy them for the first time. Drunken Master is an early Chan leading effort, after he had become big enough to headline movies (this was his fourth starring role), but before he had perfected his affable comic action persona. Unusually enough for Chan, his character here undergoes a modest amount of development, going from an atypical arrogant young man to the kind of more humble comic performance he became famous for. Clearly a product of the 1970s Honk Kong movie industry, Drunken Master has its rough edges: the image is soft, the editing can be rough and the fights don’t have the polish or inventiveness of later productions. Then there’s the language issue—despite the ridiculous sound effects, I’m pretty happy with the French-dubbed version, which does not pretend to be naturalistic at all and is thus immediately understandable without some of the stilted awkwardness of some English subtitled martial arts movies. (The Anglosphere is awesome, but it’s really not as skilled as the Francosphere at dubbing or even translating movies.)  But here is the wonder of Jackie Chan and martial-arts movies in general: Depending so clearly on physical performances from skilled artists, they have a value that transcends time and space to remain enjoyable even now. I’m hardly the first to make the point, but there’s a wonder to the physical performance that feels a lot like classic Hollywood dance numbers. You can say that they’re not making them like that any more, and that’s true: the training regimen and specialized filmmaking units required to make such movies are gone now, and what remains are the movies made during their heyday. This one may not be all that good in terms of plotting (although it does have a cleaner arc than most martial arts movies), but it has an edge in terms of humour and the fight sequence remain spectacular. Drunken Master doesn’t quite match its sequel (which ranks among one of the best martial arts movies of all time), but it’s a lot of fun to watch even now, and a welcome discovery for those Chan fans who missed it until now.