Time for Rambo to move over?

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 13

Time for Rambo to move over?

NZPA-AP Hong Kong Jackie Chan, the successor to the legendary Bruce Lee as Asia’s top action film star, insists he has more to offer than Sylvester “Rambo” Stallone. “I think I am far better than him. I dare say it straight to his face because I can do things he can but he can’t do things I can,” Chan claimed in an interview. Chan, aged 34, is famous throughout Asia for the death-defying and sometimes painful stunts liberally sprinkled throughout his movies. He is little impressed by the Rambo film series, claiming Stallone doesn’t attempt such exploits. “We see the cave explode and then there he is, appearing on top of another hill. Really Rambo, huh?” Chan said of Stallone’s portrayal of John Rambo, the fictional one-man army. “I only do what I really can, something an ordinary man cannot do but a trained man can. This is me,” the baby-faced Chan said, proudly tapping his chest. In the 1987 film “Pr'oject A 11, Chan jumped from a 16m clock tower to the concrete ground through two flimsy canvasses in a typical example of his derring-dcS' . ..

Such stunts, however, don’t come without bruises. In July, for example, Chan knocked himself out in a scene in which he somersaulted on top of a moving bus before smashing through a billboard. The combination of stunts and humour have made Chan’s movies a smash box-office success in Asia. His 10 latest films earned more than SUSISO million ($222 million) in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia alone. Chan-mania appears throughout the region. When he appeared for a promotion in Tokyo in March, 800 fans showed up. He topped a list of idols in a survey of Taiwan teenagers released in February. In 1987, a Japanese girl moved to Hong Kong to serve him tea in his studio every day. Chan made her his floor manager, a move that prompted dozens more Japanese' women to fly to the British colony. "I am in great trouble. I hire themall but I can’t fire them. I don’t know what to do,” he said. The muscular Chan says he does not dare have a girlfriend for fear of driving his fans to despair. Two Japanese girls reportedly have tried to kill themselves over the actor.