In Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992), the first movie where Stanley Tong directed Jackie Chan, he had the Hong Kong actor dangling mid-air from a rope ladder off a helicopter, as downtown Kuala Lumpur whizzed by below him.

It was a flying start to a partnership that has spanned 25 years and six movies. During this time, Chan has leapt off a building, jumped onto a speeding hovercraft and swum with sharks.

In their latest work, the action- comedy Kung Fu Yoga, which opens here on Friday, Tong has him taking part in a thrilling car chase while sharing his vehicle with a less-than-pleased real lion.

Tong, 56, is now one of a small group of film-makers that the superstar has total trust in.

In an interview with The Straits Times recently, Chan, 62, says: “I’m completely reassured when he’s in charge, so I’ll leave everything to him, from the script to the locations, and I need not look over the details.”

They are honest with each other to the point that Tong can tell him to lose weight for a film.

And when Chan retorts that he is not the only one who has packed on the pounds, the director shoots back: “Da ge, it doesn’t matter for me since I’m behind the camera.”

That they have built a strong rapport over the years is apparent at this joint interview.

It was a different story on the set of Police Story 3. At the time, Chan was already a big star with gongfu hits such as Drunken Master (1978) and action-comedy fare including Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985). Tong, on the other hand, had just directed a small action film called Stone Age Warriors (1991).

It was Chan’s godfather, the late Leonard Ho, famed Hong Kong producer and one of the founders of movie company Golden Harvest, who brought the two together.

Chan recalls: “He said he knew this young chap called Stanley Tong who had made a very exciting film for very little money. I watched it and thought it was not bad.”

When Tong got the offer for his big directorial break, he did not respond for two weeks.

“I rewatched all of his films and racked my brains to come up with something new for him to do. If I couldn’t bring something different to the table, I wouldn’t have dared to accept it.”

He came up with something no one had seen before all right, but how did he get Chan to agree to such an outrageous helicopter stunt?

Tong’s background as a stuntman helped – he would demonstrate to Chan what needed to be done first. He says: “(Chan)’s such a big star and action choreographer that I can’t be just sitting there pointing my finger and telling him what to do.”

Both director and actor ended up with injuries during filming. Chan’s right shoulder was accidentally sideswiped by the aircraft, while Tong broke his shin when he stood in for another actor for the helicopter stunt.

The director’s inventiveness and fearlessness won Chan over.

“That was our first film so I had some reservations initially. But within a week, you know whether someone can make it,” Chan says. “We’re on the same wavelength.”

Coming from a living cinema legend like Chan, this is a compliment of the highest order.

When they make a movie together, Tong says he has a template, but it is a formula that others would be hard-pressed to replicate.

His rule is to have five big set-ups and two smaller ones and all these action scenes need to be sequences Chan has not attempted before. And, oh yes, they have to be funny too.

This is why they collaborate only every few years as it takes time to come up with new ideas to propel their films to new heights.

For Kung Fu Yoga, Chan came up with the basic premise of bringing together Chinese gongfu and Indian yoga, and then left it to his trusted partner to come up with a script.

Tong dreamt up of a treasure-hunting adventure that had them filming in the ice caves and on the glaciers of Iceland, as well as in the intricate temples of India and the streets of Dubai.

At the same time, there is a link to their earlier work – Kung Fu Yoga is a continuation of The Myth (2005), in which Chan first played an archaeologist named Jack.

To up the stakes of a car chase scene in the new work, Tong decided to add a lion to the mix.

Tong says: “Coaxing the lion into the car was already not easy. Cajoling him (Chan) to get in after that was even more difficult.”

Chan says drily: “I was bitten by a dog in CZ12 and had to get three shots. And now he’s got a lion. I told him, ‘Get a stand-in, I’m not doing this.’

“Of course I was afraid. When I first saw it in a cage, I didn’t even dare to go near it.”

He might grouse, but Chan definitely enjoys the adrenaline rush of his movie stunts, from water-skiing to underwater diving to skydiving.

“You get the best teachers; locations get sealed off; there are 800 people on stand-by. It’s not possible for a regular person to experience this. Plus, you get paid,” he says.

And after a lifetime of putting his life on the line to entertain his fans, Chan was finally recognised with an honorary Oscar last November.

He says: “Can you imagine a comic action actor getting an Oscar? No one would have believed it 20 years ago. Not just Oscar, but even Golden Horse Award, Hong Kong Film Award, Golden Rooster Award – no one would have given anything to us.

“But I love it, which is why I’ve persevered for so long. It turns out that when you keep at it for years, people do notice.”

bchan@sph.com.sg

Kung Fu Yoga opens in Singapore on Friday.

Stunning stunts

Stanley Tong has directed Jackie Chan in a total of six films – not including Once A Cop (1993) in which Chan has a cameo – and they include some of Hong Kong cinema’s finest examples of action comedy as well as most outrageous stunts.

1

POLICE STORY 3: SUPER COP (1992)

Chan reprises his role as cop Chan Ka Kui, who works with an Interpol inspector (Michelle Yeoh) to take down a drug lord. In one scene, he hangs on for dear life to a rope ladder dangling from an airborne helicopter. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 96 per cent The Los Angeles Times said: “To watch Jackie Chan, Hong Kong’s king of kung fu comedy, in the fresh and exhilarating Super Cop is like watching Douglas Fairbanks Sr or one of the silent era clowns in one of their biggest hits.”

2

RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (1995)

Set in New York City, this was the movie that broke Chan into the mainstream in the United States as it topped the box office in its opening weekend. He plays a Hong Kong cop up against a local crime syndicate and, in one scene, leaps from a rooftop onto the balcony of a building across the street without wires or a harness. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 79 per cent Time Out said: “Chan’s insistence on his own fallibility and vulnerability, taken with virtuoso scenes like the fight involving 101 domestic appliances, shows why he means more to his countless fans than six US action stars put together.”
 

3

POLICE STORY 4: FIRST STRIKE (1996)

In this instalment, Chan Ka Kui is up against an illegal weapons dealer. Jackie Chan swam with the sharks for this movie. As Tong recalls, it took 350 hours of filming in a tank filled with the razor-teethed creatures. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 55 per cent Website lovehkfilm.com said: “There is one terrific central action sequence and the shark tank chase at the end is fun, but nothing else truly surprising happens.”

4

THE MYTH (2005)

Chan (above, with co-star Kim Hee Sun) plays two roles – an archaeologist in the present day and a Qin Dynasty general. In a fun scene, he has to fight off baddies while trying to unstick himself from a conveyor belt smeared with glue. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 20 per cent Variety said: “Embodies the high-stakes risks inherent in switching between multiple genres, particularly considering the story’s central point is nearly lost in the process.”

5

CZ12 (2012)

Chan is tasked with tracking down priceless bronze animal heads. He careens down a hill in a roller-blading suit and glides underneath a moving truck. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 38 per cent The Straits Times said: “His absolute disregard for what the human body can take is why his stunts are such a thrill to watch. You marvel at what he does and then grimace when the falls, stumbles and burns are ultimately revealed.”

Jackie Chan’s bevy of beauties

Jackie Chan may never get to play the British secret agent codenamed 007, but that has not stopped him from acquiring his own version of the Bond girls.

He romanced Maggie Cheung in the first three instalments of Police Story in the 1980s and 1990s; met his match in tough cookie Michelle Yeoh, who performed her own daredevil stunts in Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992) ; teamed up with American actress Jennifer Love Hewitt in spy comedy The Tuxedo (2002); and picked Singapore’s Fann Wong to star in his 2003 Hollywood movie Shanghai Knights.

His latest action-comedy Kung Fu Yoga has not one but three beauties – Chinese yoga starlet Mu Qimiya and Indian actresses Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur.

Pranked by Jackie Chan

Who: Amyra Dastur, 23

Occupation: Model, actress

Dastur, who starred in Bollywood movies Mr. X (2015) and Issaq (2013), says it was a refreshing change for her to audition for an English-speaking part, but she did not know it was for a Jackie Chan movie. So the Indian actress was elated to nab the role of feisty princess Kyra, the younger sister of Ashmita (Disha Patani) who tags along for the treasure hunt – she says Chan is her hero.

What was your reaction when you first met Chan?

I’ve grown up watching his movies such as Rush Hour, Rumble In The Bronx and Armour Of God… and to meet him in real life, it was insane. I was star-struck the first time. It took me about a week to talk to him normally, without looking at him and thinking, “Oh my god.”

What were the fun moments with him on the set?

He kept scaring me. He would come up behind me and go, “Boo.” Once, he did it while I was holding a tray of vegetables and the tray flipped over. Director Stanley Tong said: “This is going to take a long time to reset.”

What was the toughest stunt you had to execute?

I had to climb a wall of ice in Iceland. I had cloth gloves on and they got wet. I was hooked to a wall of ice, more than 7.5m up in the air, and my fingers were starting to turn purple. I thought to myself: “S***, what have I gotten myself into?” We did the glacier-climbing for three days. I used up a lot of strength and I could not feel my thighs and arms after the whole thing was over.

Did you sustain any injuries on the set?

Disha and I do not have any martial arts background. There was definitely a danger when doing stunts, but nothing serious happened to us. Except for a few bumps and bruises, we had no broken bones.

Just like a Bond girl

Who: Disha Patani, 23

Occupation: Model, actress

A model and first runner-up in beauty pageant Femina Miss India 2013, she made her film debut in the 2015 Telugu film Loafer and her Bollywood debut in M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016), the biopic of an Indian cricketer. In Kung Fu Yoga, she plays princess Ashmita, who needs archaeology professor Jack’s (Chan) expertise to find the lost treasures of her kingdom.

Did you know of Chan when you were growing up?

He is very famous in India. We used to watch the animated series Jackie Chan Adventures. We watched him do stunts in his movies and wished we could do things like that one day.

He is such a legend, so doing a film with him is a dream come true. I remember the first day of filming with him and I couldn’t stop smiling the whole shoot.

He has a penchant for casting beautiful women in his movies. How do you feel being labelled one of Chan’s beauties?

I feel it is like being a Bond girl. It is not so much about being the girl, but you learn so much just by being around him, such as how he is always cleaning the environment. He has this positive energy. It makes you want to work hard yourself.

Did he have to push you to do some of the more intense scenes, such as plunging into the icy-cold waters in Iceland?

He didn’t push me. I pushed myself. I was a huge fan and I wanted to impress him. I look up to him.

It was really cold. I couldn’t move my toes and fingertips because of the cold. We are not used to the environment conditions in Iceland.

Yoga Goddess of Asia

Who: Mu Qimiya, 29

Occupation: Yoga practitioner, actress

When yoga was incorporated into the action movie, director Tong had the perfect candidate in mind to cast – Mu, a Yunnan native who is touted as the Yoga Goddess of Asia after pictures of her practising yoga went viral on social media. She plays Nuomin, a teaching assistant to an archaeology professor (Chan).

Mu has built up a huge online following promoting yoga via videos and mass yoga sessions and parlayed her popularity into show-business opportunities, such as starring in Chinese thriller Tomb Robber (2014).

What was Chan like on the set of Kung Fu Yoga?

He is like a big kid – he is the most enthusiastic and hardworking. He even picks up trash and carries props. He gave us tips for fight scenes, on how to make the actions look beautiful and how to achieve comic timing.

Do the actresses get special treatment from him?

Big brother (Chan) takes care of every person on set. In cold weather, he buys us heat packs. In hot weather, he would treat us to popsicles. When the cameras are rolling, he expects his actors to give their all during action scenes.

He doesn’t like girls to be delicate flowers. The female actresses are all tough cookies. He also doesn’t like “xiao xian rou” (Mandarin slang for handsome young men) to complain about hard work. His positive working attitude is an inspiration to the next generation of actors.

Did you teach him any yoga moves?

Rather than say I taught him yoga moves, there was an exchange of knowledge between us. Chan has a solid martial arts background and I’ve just been practising yoga for a longer time. I advised him on breathing techniques that will result in better flow in movements. But he taught me many more things.

Gwendolyn Ng

This article was first published on Jan 25, 2017.
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