Review: Who Am I?

Who Am I (Jackie Chan) is a Chinese special forces soldier who is sent as part of a team of several members of different nationalities, to South Africa (I think) to steal a meteorite fragment (I think), that is so powerful an energy source that it can provide a whole city and then some, with electricity (I think). After the mission is completed, Who Am I and his team are betrayed by their superiors and left to plummet to their death in a pilotless helicopter (I think) that crash lands, killing all onboard, except Who Am I. Who Am I awakens an amnesiac in an ancient-Africa-style Southern African desert village whose inhabitants wear headdresses and loincloths. Thus begins his language-barrier-gag-peppered journey to recover his memory, the fragment and avenge the death of his teammates. And I must add, the language-barrier gags will have you rolling in the aisles.

This film has beautiful scenery and photography. There's a scene where Who Am I, having left the village and dressed like some kind of Sino-African desert tribesman, with a spear no less, chances upon a brother-and-sister team of rally drivers whose vehicle has broken down in a Dakar Rally-style race through the desert, and assists the lady whose brother has been incapacitated by a nasty snakebite, to fix their vehicle and get back in the race, albeit with him (Who Am I) now in the driver's seat. What ensues when Who Am I sets the rally vehicle in motion -- the lady navigating and the brother convalescing in the back -- is a scene with driving, scenery and aerial photography so brilliant, it would make participants of the real Dakar Rally, quite green with envy.

Also in this scene, it's quite funny how when Who Am I arrives at the stationary vehicle -- with his unusual appearance and spear remember -- sees the man lying on the ground semi-conscious, with the snakebite visible on his arm, finds antidote in the form of some green herb which he puts in his mouth and proceeds to chew in order to place on the bite -- whilst kneeling beside the man -- is then mistaken for a man-eating savage that's chewing the man's arm, by the lady driver standing on elevated ground in the distance, flailing her arms for help from vehicles whizzing by. The humor in this scene is absolutely fantastic -- a fine comedy of misunderstanding -- as the lady confronts Who Am I and threatens the seemingly savage man with Karate and tries to fool him into thinking that a battery-run torch is a fire-breathing weapon -- a gun. Who Am I, rendered temporarily speechless by the herb that he chewed, has difficulty explaining himself.

Also in this scene, having convinced the lady that he means them no harm, Who Am I displays some impressive ingenuity, by improvising an IV drip, for the snakebitten man, from coconuts, rubber tubing and pieces of metal sharpened on the spinning, wheelless axle of a car. I'm sure the screenwriter(s) was impressed by his own cleverness. Another scene with impressive ingenuity, is when Who Am I makes his way down the side of a very tall building by wrapping tough cable around himself, jumping off the edge and unspooling like a yo-yo or cable on a winch, until he gently hits the ground far below -- pure genius. Jackie Chan is a stunts whiz.

There's a scene where Who Am I is still at the village and everyone is gathered for some ceremony, and there's dancing. The way the villagers were dancing, didn't seem to me like bona fide traditional African dance. It was just too contemporary, considering this was a traditional African village, it looked like something out of a Broadway musical or the stage version of "The Lion King". I know next to nothing about traditional Southern African dance, but this was too -- for lack of a better word -- orderly. It was more like contemporary South African gumboot dancing -- without the gumboots. Not that this has a direct link, but it reminded me of something that Benin-born model-turned-actor Djimon Hounsou, said about Africans having to portray themselves as parodies of themselves in mainstream American cinema.

It was fun to see the juxtaposing of disparate cultures: Jackie Chan, whom we all know is Chinese, playing an English-speaker without a clue as to what the, I think, Zulu-speaking villagers were saying and vice versa. Suffering from memory loss, Jackie Chan's character asks the villagers who he is and they mistake the question for his name and from then on he is known as "Who Am I" -- nice. It was interesting to see Jackie Chan in Africa, speaking a few lines of Zulu. I got the impression that he's an open-minded filmmaker who's willing to explore and felt a great deal of respect and admiration for him, as a filmmaker.

The elaborate fights and stunts were top-notch, as one would expect from a Jackie Chan film, but I often find myself wishing that Mr. Chan would tone down the acrobatics and goofiness and be a real badass -- infuse the fights with gore and death. And then it hits me -- that way he'd just be like everybody else.