Miracles (1989)

Miracles (1989)

10/10

Starring

Jackie Chan

Anita Mui

Gua Ah-leh

Ko Chun-hsiung

Wu Ma

Directed by Jackie Chan

I would not deny that The Legend of Drunken Master (or Drunken Master II) is my favourite Jackie Chan movie, but Miracles is up there as one of my favourites. This movie is known by many other names (Mr. Canton and Lady Rose, Black Dragon and The Canton Godfather) depending on the region to which you are watching it from.

The action-comedy has Jackie Chan playing a crime boss, a position he got when the crime boss of a crew died, naming him the new leader. What makes this so fun to see is that, Kuo Cheng-Wah (Jackie Chan) is a stranger to the crew and the crime boss himself, how he then became the leader is what you have to watch the movie to see.

Cheng-Wah is a nice naive man, who is kind-hearted and his luck in this movie will make you laugh. The movie starts with his naivety getting him to lose his money, and he is left broke and with nowhere to go. Walking about, he meets a woman who pleads with him to buy a red rose, saying it will bring him luck.

With him thinking what the heck, be buys one and luck hits him straight in the face, he becomes a crime boss of.

Things in his life of being the wrong person for the wrong job got a little more clumsy when singer Yang Luming (Anita Mui) comes to him. He hires her, and she did not help with his cover. To make things worse, a rival gang wants to move in on his territory, and he has to defend that, while Yang Luming wants him to continue to be good.

Thanks to the rival gang, we get to see some fantastic kung-fu.

The movie is the first collaboration between Jackie Chan and the late Anita Mui, and they went on to make two other movies together. Their second collaboration was The Legend of Drunken Master (1994) and their last was Rumble in the Bronx (1995).

The movie has amazing stunts, and the whole idea of making this movie more comedic than action added to the fun of the story. But Chan did not downplay on the actions and the stunts that are numerous in the film itself.

Chan adapted this movie from Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles (1961).

He then produced the movie in a 1930s setting, and then added to it his action, expanding on the leads backstories, while sticking a little close to the movie to which he was adapting from.

If you have not seen this movie, then you have a hole in your Jackie Chan list of films seen.