Question:What do a jacket, a car antenna, a bottle, a snow ski, a pinball machine, a refrigerator, a shopping cart and monkey bars all have in common?

Answer:They are all, at one point or another, used as weapons in Rumble in the Bronx, starring Jackie Chan.

Chan portrays Keung, who comes to America from Hong Kong for his uncle’s wedding. In the process, he gets mixed up with a Bronx motorcycle gang because of his romantic interlude with the girlfriend of the leader, as well as a diamond smuggling scam. But to give such a simplified summary of the plot is almost like saying Romeo and Juliet is about teen suicide.

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It begins with his uncle selling his store and Chan jumping to action when the gang starts causing trouble. Because of this, the members immediately do all they can to find Chan and impose random acts of violence on him.

Later, when one of the gang members puts stolen diamonds in the wheelchair of a boy who Chan is watching, he gets involved with the F.B.I. and diamond smugglers.

Although the plot is somewhat unbelievable, and some of the dubbing can be annoying at times, the movie’s magic lies in the screen presence of Chan.

With extremely dangerous stunts and an even faster fighting style, Chan performs with a comedic talent reminiscent of the silent film star Buster Keaton, who was one of Chan’s favorite actors as a kid.

Pound-for-pound, Keaton was one of Hollywood’s strongest men, and used that strength to perform amazing stunts in his films. Chan uses that same type of physical style and incorporates it into the fight scenes.

Chan has made more money from his films than any other actor. Taking into account how he is virtually unknown in America (most people only know him as the karate-fighting driver from the Cannonball Run movies) should give you and idea of just how popular he is outside of the States.

To watch Bronx is to watch Chan push himself to the limit of human endurance when as he performs all of his own stunts.

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The best stunt of the film consists of Chan jumping off the roof of a parking garage to the fire escape one floor down of the building across the street.

Chan is no stranger to hospitals, considering he has broken nearly every bone in his body during the course of his career because of the loyalty he has to performing his own stunts that get more dangerous in each movie.

The most dangerous occurred in the movie The Armor of God where he attempted to jump out of a hot-air balloon into a tree. The tree branch he landed on broke, and Chan fell 45 feet to the ground, cracking his skull. He now has a plastic knob implanted into his head to seal the fracture.

There is one scene in Bronx where Chan breaks his ankle while jumping onto a hovercraft.

In an interview with David Letterman, Chan said that he only agreed to go to the hospital after he found out the camera-man had gotten the shot.

The amazing thing about all of this is that Chan returned to work the next day. All of the scenes with Chan water-skiing off the back of the hovercraft and with him dodging semis and busses in the middle of rush hour traffic are done with Chan wearing a cast around his ankle.

At the end of the movie the audience can see how he puts a type of sock over his cast that looks like the sneaker he is wearing on the other foot.

The movie (follow closely, this can get confusing) was filmed in America to be shown in Asia. Because of that, Chan, and the other Asian actors spoke Chinese, and the Americans’ voices later were dubbed in.

When New Line Cinema decided to release Bronx in America, the Americans’ voices had to be dubbed back in, as well as dubbing the Asian actors into English. So yes, the movie is dubbed at parts, and the simplistic plot makes it obvious that the movie was filmed by someone other than an American.

There is one scene where, after beating gang members senseless, Chan gives a heart-warming speech about how they should stop all of their fighting and how he would like to be their friend. This may seem realistic to someone in Asia, but an American director would have known that any man who goes into gang territory in the Bronx to pick a fight with them is immediately going to get popped with a .44.

What the movie lacks in style and basic plot, however, is more than made up for when it comes to Chan’s stunts, fight scenes and physical comedy. (Be honest now, when was the last time you went to a Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie simply for the plot?)

Chan has been trying to break into the American movie scene for a long time, and this may just be the stepping stone to do it. If you are looking for a good action movie with stunts that will make you flinch and fight scenes that are fast and furious, this is the one.

Three out of four stars.