Kuo Cheng Wah (Jackie Chan) arrives in Hong Kong to start a new life, but is swiftly conned into giving all his money away. However, through an unlikely turn of events he finds himself boss of a crime gang. Any further plot synopsis is rendered difficult due to the farcical nature of the film – everyone has at least two identities and things get a bit complicated!

MR CANTON AND LADY ROSE (which is almost always referred to by its English name MIRACLES) had a bit of a bad reputation in the late 80’s and early nineties. I remember I was in a video shop in 1992 and I overheard a conversation about Jackie where one guy vehemently said, “I like Jackie Chan, but I don’t like Miracles”, and that was the general opinion of most people at that time. Even Golden Harvest weren’t too keen, and complained that the film was too long (at two hours) and they couldn’t fit enough screenings in one day to get their money back.

The main source of discontent at the time of release was the lack of fight scenes, which seems odd these days compared to his current output. Sure, there aren’t many action scenes at all, but what IS there is truly superb – and if the final showdown at the rope factory doesn’t bring a smile to your face then you’re watching the wrong genre of film.

This was the film in which Jackie tried to become a serious director, with long tracking shots and a higher emphasis on good quality camerawork. He succeeds to a point, but the effort was mainly wasted on an audience who just wanted to go and see Jackie Chan do his usual stuff and beat up a few people along the way. You can probably blame the shift away from action scenes to what is essentially and old-time comedy (that would have probably performed well as a stage play) on his accident during the filming of ARMOUR OF GOD. He’d always hinted afterwards that he’d like to try and just be a director and let other people be the stars, and this feels like an attempt to wean his audience off his usual style.

The cast is strong for the most part and contains MANY cameos from the great and good of Hong Kong cinema at the time. In fact, it appears that Jackie was attempting to out-Sammo Sammo Hung’s MILLIONAIRES EXPRESS. Although the way in which Jackie is appointed the new head of the crime gang is utterly unbelievable, the whole film is to be taken as a fantasy and works well as such. The scene in which Jackie, who wants the gang to go straight, employs the mob to immitate high-ranking Hong Kong officials is particularly entertaining, but needs to be seen in its original Cantonese language to get the full benefit. On the subject, the first dubbed version I watched of this film had the gangsters all talking in Italian-American accents. Talk about dumb: I expected them to all start calling each other Tony and start arguing over pizza.

The only real problem with this film is that the plot elements appear to be a little second-hand (that and the tendency to touch on melodrama at times). I haven’t seen POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES that this seems to be inspired by so I can’t comment on any similarity, but in general the farcical elements are standard fare for the genre and you do get the feeling you’ve seen it all before. Particularly, the Police Inspector played by Richard Ng is evidently heavily influenced by Peter Sellers’ Clouseau. As groundbreaking in terms of cinematography this film is, unfortunately it shows up the incidental music which relies on anachronistic synthesisers and electric guitars. It’s a shame that more attention wasn’t shown to this aspect of the film, as it does feel jarringly out of place for a film set in the 30’s.

It’s not widely known, but this film suffered from many mishaps during its gestation, including the death of (I believe) a painter, who fell from one of the sets while working. Rumour has it that Jackie has provided well for the family ever since.

A sad footnote to a film that should have been appreciated more at the time particularly with so many of the cast no longer with us.