DAY 26: Jackie Chan!

A group of elite, multi-national commando operatives pulls off a midnight raid in the South African jungle to kidnap three scientists who have been experimenting with a highly volatile, weaponized meteorite ore. The mission goes off without a hitch, but the higher-ups, specifically the crooked, power-hungry CIA operative Morgan (Ron Smerczak), want the prize all to themselves. Morgan sabotages the escape helicopter, causing it to crash into the wilderness.

The lone survivor of the crash is a commando played by Jackie Chan. He wakes up with a massive case of amnesia and absolutely zero memory of who he is, where he came from or how he learned to break bones with lightning speed. He is taken in and nursed back to health by a local African tribe. When they ask him his identity, he repeatedly screams his frustration at the sky: “Who am I?!” Taking him literally, the tribe adopts him under the name “Whoami.“

After rescuing a lost rally car racing team, “Whoami” gets a ticket back to civilization, where he catches the eye of a seemingly sweet but incredibly suspicious news reporter named Christine Stark (Michelle Ferre). Unfortunately for him, his sudden media exposure alerts the corrupt masterminds behind the original double-cross. With assassins, black-ops agents and the CIA hunting him across Europe, Jackie has to piece together his fractured memory while turning everything from Dutch furniture to footwear into deadly weapons.

The movie features one of the most terrifying, legendary stunts in cinema history. Jackie slides down the steep, sloped glass exterior of the 21-story Willemswerf building in Rotterdam, Netherlands, with absolutely no safety wires. The stunt required Jackie to break his fall by tumbling over a ledge at the bottom. He reportedly took multiple takes to perfect it, severely injuring his back and ankle in the process. And in the final seven-minute brawl on top of the Rotterdam building, Jackie uses his improv style against Ron Smoorenburg’s insane flexibility and Kwan Yung’s rapid-fire close-quarters strikes.

Depending on where you watched it, you saw a different movie. The original Hong Kong cut runs over two full hours and keeps the mystery intact, letting the audience piece together the plot alongside Jackie. The North American edit trims the runtime down to around 108 minutes, heavily cutting the early scenes with the African tribe and re-editing the opening special ops sequence so the audience knows exactly what happened right from the start.

Extras on the Arrow Video release include commentary by critic James Mudge; Breakout! Part 6, a new featurette in which critic James Mudge, actor Glory Simon and second unit cinematographer Ray Wong look back at the film; From Drunk to Slam Dunk: Jackie Chan in the New Millennium, a new featurette in which Mudge, Simon, Wong, stuntwoman Kathy Hubble, stuntmen Wang Yao and Mars, critic David West and others look at Jackie’s career in the years since the films in this set; The Making of Who Am I?, a three-part archive behind-the-scenes featurette; trailers; an image gallery; Who, When & Where, an expanded interview with Wong and Jostling with Jackie, an expanded interview with Simon. You can get this from MVD.