MIRACLES aka MR. CANTON AND LADY ROSE (1989)
Directed by: Jackie Chan
Starring: Jackie Chan, Anita Mui, Wu Ma, Gloria Yip, Billy Chow

If you ask Jackie Chan which movie he’s most proud of directing, he always names this shimmering 1920s gangster fantasia. One of his greatest achievements, it’s also one of his most neglected. MIRACLES (also known as MR. CANTON AND LADY ROSE) is a remake of Frank Capra’s POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (1961, itself a remake of Capra’s LADY FOR A DAY, 1933), and it represents the road not taken in Jackie’s career, a sign that the world wasn’t ready for the uncompromising quality Jackie Chan wanted to give it. He wanted to direct big, lavish, opulent movies where action was merely one of the attractions, but the world wanted him to keep making movies that were first and foremost action flicks. However, MIRACLES remains a vision of what might have been.

Chan plays a penniless country bumpkin arriving in Twenties Hong Kong and stumbling into the middle of a gang war. One of those “only in the movies” mix-ups occurs and Chan finds himself the head of the gang. That’s the Mr. Canton part.

Lady Rose isn’t Anita Mui (who plays a singer working in Chan’s nightclub to pay off her father’s debts) but a rose hawker whom Chan considers his lucky charm. She’s been passing herself off as a high society matron in letters to her daughter living overseas, who has no idea her Mom is dead broke and the money she spends so freely is earned by her mother’s backbreaking physical labor and exhausting hours. Her high life has attracted a wealthy fiancée and now she wants to come back to Hong Kong after all these years and introduce him, and his well-heeled family, to Mom for a prenuptial celebration, never dreaming that her mother actually lives in a slum.

Jackie Chan and Anita Mui, playing the King and Queen of the Hong Kong underworld step in and decide to set Mom up as a lady, installing her in an expensive suite and enlisting various goons and hoods to impersonate the gadabouts of the upper class. Complications ensue.

The plot complications are echoed by fluid, intricate, restless cinematography that Chan shot with cutting edge camera equipment he mostly bought for the film, giving the entire movie the feel of one of his impossible fight scenes that always seems on the verge of collapsing into chaos. Chan manages to keep his plot afloat with delicate pokes and jabs, while teasing out once-in-a-lifetime performances from his supporting cast, not doing so badly himself, perfectly evoking period Hong Kong, and staying fast on his feet.

This film may be under-rated because it’s light on action. There are only a couple of set pieces scattered about the film, some of them lasting less than a minute, and the two biggest are choreographed and stylized to the point of feeling more like ballet than combat. They’re some of the most rarefied fight-work Chan has ever done.

Like a glass of expensive champagne, the movie never loses its fizzle, leaving audiences dizzy and light-headed. When this movie’s over, no matter who and where you are, you’ve got no choice but to applaud.