Jackie Chan actually started making martial-arts films before Lee, beginning in 1960, and has since become one of the biggest film stars in the world. It wasn't until 1993's Super Cop, however, that Chan, riding in on a wave of interest in Hong Kong cinema, really started to make a dent in the U.S. market.

His newest U.S. release isn't really a new release at all; Operation Condor, which Chan also directed, was originally released in Hong Kong in 1990 as Armor of God II. But as with his other recent releases -- Super Cop and Rumble In The Bronx -- Condor has found new life in the states as film studios rush to sate the public's newfound hunger for Chan films.

Condor is the type of light, fast-action fare international audiences have come to expect from Chan. The plot, such as it is, wastes little time in setting the star up as a secret agent on a mission to recover a cache of gold plundered by the Nazis and stashed at the end of the war on a hidden army base somewhere in the North African desert. Accompanying Chan on his mission are another agent (Carol Cheng) and the granddaughter of the commander of the German army unit that hid the gold (Eva Cobo De Garcia). Chasing them are a mysterious group of black-clad baddies and a couple of bungling middle-eastern thieves who serve no real purpose other than to give Chan something to hit and provide a little comic relief when necessary.

At this point you have to realize that a Jackie Chan movie isn't filmmaking the way Western audiences are accustomed to seeing it. Taking their cue from literature, Western films have always been narrative-driven. What happens to the characters to get them from one point to the next?

A Chan film, on the other hand, isn't about story or characters; it's about movement, choreography, and spectacle, not unlike a Busby Berkeley musical or the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

In fact, the comparisons between Chan and the great physical comedians of the silent-film era have been frequent to the point of cliche. Well, Chan doesn't have the pathos of a Chaplin; there is little to no emotional depth in his films. But like those film giants, Chan has over his career managed to forge an on-screen persona -- the hapless, occasionally bungling wise guy who is at his most graceful when he has a dozen thugs charging after him -- who charms audiences and holds their attention during the brief interludes between action sequences.

It is in the staging of those action sequences, however, that Chan really excels. A necessary element to the enjoyment of any Chan film is the knowledge that he performs all his own stunts. And though Condor isn't as spectacular as Super Cop, it keeps up Chan's reputation with some truly memorable action bits, including a sequence in which Chan turns a warehouse into a jungle gym while a half-dozen of the bad guys' cars swarm around him with balletic precision, and another highly comic brawl in a wind tunnel.

It's not giving away much to say that at the end of the movie, Chan walks off into the blazing Sahara sun with his two female companions (plus a third he somehow acquired along the way) in tow. It's also probably not a real surprise that anyone looking for a politically correct action film should stay home; though not nearly as blatant as most American action films, some characterizations in Condor could be easily be construed as sexist and/or racist. But anyone applying socio-political theory to such a light-hearted vehicle is only cheapening their stance. Jackie Chan is nothing but pure energy, not directed toward a goal or an ideology, but captured on film solely so the world can marvel at its exertion.