Year: 1978
Plot: Surely in with a mighty strong shout for 'worst-named Jackie Chan film' - if not 'worst film name in history' - this is a played-for-giggles effort that delivers neither epic LOLs nor any decent jaw-splintering in their absence.
Chan's jobless loser dreams of being a bone-crunching bodyguard type, but doesn't know any sweet moves. Until, that is, he eats a can of spinach...cue Popeye music (no, literally), followed by lots of silly slapstick fight choreography. Hardly essential viewing, but almost worth it for sheer oddity.
Trivia: Half A Loaf was pretty much the first ever Chan film to see him fuse action and comedy in what would later become his trademark style.
He'd been trying to break out of the cycle of po-faced costume romps that had informed his career up until this point, and convinced producer Lo Wei to let him play it for laughs. The latter agreed, but disliked the result so much that he refused to release it - until Chan had a smash-hit two years later with Drunken Master, of course...
Check out the Total Film page on Chan's latest, The Karate Kid (2010), over here.
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Comments
Serrano
Jul 30th 2010, 16:24
Fantasy Mission Force is easily my favourite Jackie Chan film. I am not kidding.
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Hadouken76
Aug 1st 2010, 10:03
Armour of God 1 & 2, Snake in the Eagles shadow. Classic Chan.
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hago1
Aug 1st 2010, 10:47
No mention of Shanghai Noon/Shanghai Knights?
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Carl1984
Aug 1st 2010, 23:13
I am a self proclaimed massive fan of Jackie's I have every one of his films (some more then once), I also have his Hong Kong albums, books, magazines, posters ect anyway about this list I agree with some of the worst ones for instance Police Woman (A.K.A Rumble In Hong Kong) and Fantasy Mission Force deserve to be in the wost list completely also sorry to say so does The Tuxedo and The Medallion if them two had a better story they wouldn't be there. The other three Half A Loaf Of Kung Fu, Master With Cracked Fingers and Battle Creek Brawl (A.K.A The Big Brawl) don't deserve to be there. You've missed a few off the best list i.e New Police Story, The Myth, Rob-B-Hood and Shinjuku Incident. As for Drunken Master 2 it does deserve to be in the best list but the only thing that annoys me is it has never been released in the UK and I've never found a reason why.
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