Armour of God II: Operation Condor (1991)

Movie Info

You can’t catch me!

Jackie (Jackie Chan) is back and hunting treasures again!  When Jackie is contacted by Baron Bannon (Bozidar Smijanic) to locate gold lost during World War II, he find himself teamed with the granddaughter of one of the soldiers named Elsa (Eva Cobo de Garcia) and an expert on Africa named Ada (Carol Cheng) in an adventure to locate the gold in Africa.  Unfortunately, Jackie, Ada, and Elsa aren’t the only ones in the search of the treasure and the race is on!

Directed and written by Jackie Chan, Armour of God II:  Operation Condor (飛鷹計劃 or Fēi yīng jǐ huá) is a martial arts action adventure.  The movie is a sequel to the 1986 film Armour of God and released in 1991.  The movie was released in the United States as Operation Condor in 1997 before the release of Armour of God and created more confusion when Armour of God was released in 1999 as Operation Condor 2:  The Armour of Gods.

My future’s so bright, I have to wear shades!

Jackie Chan finally hit it big in the United States in 1995 when Rumble in the Bronx became a decent hit.  After 1995, it became a scramble to release old Jackie Chan movies into the US.  Operation Condor was one of the first movies released and one of Chan’s more entertaining outings.

Operation Condor takes an Indiana Jones approach to a Jackie Chan movie.  The movie even starts out with a very “Raiders of the Lost Ark adventure” at the beginning of the film with Jackie running away from a tribe of natives.  The movie is probably more like the Indiana Jones 1980s knock off adventure King Solomon’s Mines starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone.  It is not entirely original or realistic, but you don’t expect it to be.

I’ve felt better

Jackie Chan keeps the film light and fun.  Though it is a sequel, his character isn’t different or really connected much to the previous character (and another reason why the U.S. producers were able to release the sequel before the original).  In reality, you could pretty much substitute Jackie Chan’s “character” in any Jackie Chan movie…he doesn’t have much range, but it doesn’t matter because you can tell he’s having fun…plus, the guy has no humility and seems like he’ll do anything for a stunt or a laugh.

Wind tunnel of death!

The stunts of the film are always what draws you to Jackie Chan movies.  The movie is loaded with fun scenes and featured an early Zorbing stunt (before actual Zorbs were made) with his character running down a hill being chased by natives.  The movie also features a fun wind tunnel fight which really played with the ideas of forced air fighting.

Though I liked Armour of God, I did prefer Armour of God II:  Operation Condor (seeing first might have helped some).  Jackie Chan is by no means a great actor, but he brings sort of fun to his roles that not all actors have…it actually seems like acting is fun to him.  Armour of Gods II:  Operation Condor was followed by CZ12 (or Chinese Zodiac) in 2012.

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