Hacker Cinema
Who Am I?
我是誰
1998 · Film · 120 min
Directed by Jackie Chan, Benny Chan Muk-sing
A group of covert CIA operatives trailing a potential new energy source are double-crossed by corrupt agent Morgan, who causes a helicopter crash in remote South Africa. The sole survivor, suffering severe amnesia, is nursed to recovery by a kindly native tribe who call him "Whoami" after the question he keeps asking. With the help of a mysterious reporter Christine, Whoami pieces together his past and tracks the turncoat agent and his criminal cohorts.
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8 comments on Hacker News
'23' is a great movie. 'Who am I' deserves a mention too.
I got you
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- High Score (A netflix series on the history of games, the first episode has a part where some college guys had to change hardware to make games harder)
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Movies
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XicLf8cyh5E
Doesn't he do a lot of frivolous and light-hearted movies though -- I'm a huge fan.
Take a movie like "Who am I", it's like Johnny English meets Drunken Master.
"Kung Fu" films to me always have a notion of slapstick, even the beautiful ones like House of Flying Daggers; Chan's background in Opera I imagine helps to fulfill that element of slightly ludicrous spectacle (at least if Chinese opera has any similarity to its Western namesake).
I mean Shanghai Noon, great film within its genre, but goofy as anything; actors doing those sorts of movies just aren't treated as serious actors I guess.
Thunderbolt from the mid 90's is one of his less popular, but it was Fast and the Furious, but 5 years earlier. He loves Mitsubishi, they're in a lot of his films.
Who Am I, First Strike, Police Stories, Armour of God, Mr. Nice Guy are all great, too.
Just a warning, but with Who Am I, my love of the movie largely comes from the rooftop fight sequence. It has been long enough that I only vaguely remember a few parts of the movie outside of that sequence. Thanks for the tip on The Foreigner, I will definitely check it out.
Not the same kind of movie (and not Jackie Chan), but Kung Fu Hustle is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. I also always thought that Bjarne Stroustrup kind of looks like The Beast in Kung Fu Hustle (it's the hair and glasses).
http://www.stroustrup.com/xBjarne2018.jpg.pagespeed.ic.hePTBHSpev.jpg
https://cinema1544.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/the-beast.jpg
Yes (to Drunken Master)! I just noticed this last weekend that it was on Netflix and re-watched it. After many years, I still really enjoy the movie.
Another one of his that I really enjoyed was Who Am I, but I haven't seen it in probably a decade.
My daughter and I have a lot of fun whenever we watch this fight from Who Am I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m6qAaqRu2M
I also like one of Jackie Chan's quotes:
Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.
> The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and left a deep impression
I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. The Chinese language edition orders the chapters differently, so that those first 3 chapters on the Cultural revolution come in the middle of chapter 9 when Wang Miao talks to the astrophysicist. The Chinese edition more clearly unfolds the events as they're found out by certain main characters.
The Jackie Chan movie "Who am I?" film was similarly butchered for Western audiences. The Asian edition has his character waking up with amnesia in Africa, and we spend the movie identifying with him as he finds out how he got there, via memories returning and clues. The American edition, however, begins by showing all the forgotten memories, taking away the mystery for the viewer.