How Brandon Lee's Rapid Fire Paid Tribute To Jackie Chan
Brandon Lee's martial arts action movie Rapid Fire paid tribute to several films of action movie legend Jackie Chan in the film's action sequences. Released in 1992, Rapid Fire starred Lee as college student Jake Lo, who finds himself on the run after witnessing a Mafia murder. With stunt coordinator Jeff Imada, Lee also choreographed the many fight scenes of Rapid Fire, with Lee and Imada giving the film a distinctly Hong Kong-style flair well ahead of Chan's breakout in the West.
Rapid Fire first homages Jackie Chan early on in the art gallery shoot when Jake runs an assassin through a glass display on a motorcycle. It was a nod to the past; Chan had executed the same stunt during the climactic mall showdown in his 1985 action-comedy Police Story. Rapid Fire's finale in the criminal compound of Chinese crime boss Kingman Tau (Tzi Ma) would also carry numerous influences from Jackie Chan's work in Police Story.
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While fighting a pair of opponents, Lee executes a jump spinning kick and spinning sweep kick combo against them, with Chan having done the same against a pair of enemies in Police Story's mall fight. Going up against another set of opponents, Lee also utilizes a clothing rack as a defensive tool, which Chan had also done in the parallel Police Story battle. In Rapid Fire's penultimate fight scene with Lee and legendary stunt man and martial artist Al Leong as Tau's henchman Minh, Lee and Imada really injected some Jackie Chan-influenced fight choreography.
Following an exchange of Wing Chun-derived punches and traps from Lee's background in Jeet Kune Do, Leong ducks to grab Lee by the waist for a takedown, with Lee striking him in the back and
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