Armour of God II: Operation Condor

Armour of God II: Operation Condor
Hong Kong film poster
Traditional	飛鷹計劃
Simplified	飞鹰计划
Mandarin	Fēi yīng jǐ huá
Cantonese	Fei1 jing1 gai3 waak6
Directed by	Jackie Chan
Produced by	Raymond Chow Leonard Ho
Written by	Jackie Chan Edward Tang
Starring	Jackie Chan Carol Cheng Eva Cobo de Garcia Shoko Ikeda
Music by	Chris Babida
Cinematography	Arthur Wong
Release date(s)	Hong Kong: 7 February 1991 (1991-02-07) United States: 18 July 1997 (1997-07-18)
Running time	106 min. (Hong Kong) 92 min. (U.S.)
Country	Hong Kong
Language	Cantonese

Armour of God II: Operation Condor (Chinese: 飛鷹計劃) is a 1991 Hong Kong martial arts-action film, directed by and starring Jackie Chan. It is the sequel to his hit Armour of God. It was produced by Golden Harvest / Paragon Films.

It was filmed primarily in Madrid, Spain, and Morocco. While the opening scenes where Asian Hawk went Powered paragliding was shot in Tagaytay City over Taal Lake, Cavite, Philippines. The scene where he stole the gem from the cave tribe and escaped by zorbing was shot in Mount Macolod in Cuenca, Batangas.

This film is even more akin to Indiana Jones than Armour of God, in that it features Chan's character Condor ("Asian Hawk" in the US release) battling against a former Nazi to retrieve gold from an abandoned base deep in the Sahara Desert. In one scene, Jackie escapes his persecutors in a zorb-like sphere.

Because this film was released in the US several years before Armour of God, its US title is simply Operation Condor. When the first film was eventually released, it was somewhat confusingly given the title Operation Condor II: The Armour of the Gods.

Plot

Treasure hunter/mercenary Asian Hawk, now known as “Asian Condor” or, simply, “Jackie” (Jackie Chan) sneaks into a set of ruins to gather several colored jewels. He is caught by a number of tribesmen, who, strangely, allow him to take the jewels, but when he fills his canteen with water running down the rocks, the tribesmen respond angrily. He is then told that, by drinking the “holy water,” a terrible fate has befallen him; he must marry a rather rotund priestess. Jackie, horrified, makes his escape from the ruins in a huge inflatable zorb, cascading down a mountainside to safety. As he escapes his zorb, he realizes that, during his escape, he dropped the jewels. He then saunters away, having done “all that for nothing".

Jackie then returns to the UN building, where he works/freelances, and is told the story of a group of Nazi officers who had amassed a king’s ransom in gold bars from other counties during World War II. They hid the gold in a secret base in the Sahara Desert, but all of them mysteriously disappeared. If word got out that all the gold stolen during the war was still in the base, other counties the world over would be fighting over themselves to get it first, so Jackie is to be sent out to locate the base and acquire the gold for the UN. He is then given a key to unlock the vault where the gold is expected to be. However, he is teamed up with a no-nonsense desert expert named Ada, who wants nothing less than total cooperation from him (something he chides at).

One day, before they depart, Jackie is accosted by a group of mysterious men who want to take the key from him. He escapes without too much harm, and, while gathering information with Ada, he discovers the location of Elsa, the granddaughter of the Nazi commander who hid the gold away. He sneaks into her house but find that she is being attacked by two Arabs who, after some prodding on his behalf, are said to be also searching for the gold. Jackie successfully fights them off, thereby saving Elsa in the process.

Elsa decides to join Jackie on his quest to find the gold, much to Ada’s discontent, but the head of the UN believes her to be of possible help, so at his insistence she travels with them to the Sahara Desert. They lodge in a rustic hotel where, again, they are attacked by a group of armed men who demand the key and the map to the base. Jackie fights them off, but they are eventually driven away by a gun-toting Elsa, who ends up shooting the whole hotel up in the process.

They leave the next day, but during that day, a man in a wheelchair interrogates the hotel manager, demanding to know where they went... During their trek through the desert, Jackie, Ada, and Elsa come across a girl named Momoko, who is traveling through the desert to, essentially, find the meaning of life. That night, raiders attack their camp and take Ada and Elsa hostage. Jackie and Momoko follow their trail to a desert market. Jackie sneaks in, finding Ada and Elsa being auctioned off as sex slaves. He tries to bid on them, but his cover is blown and the three of them escape. However, Momoko drives their jeep into a sand bank, stranding them in the desert.

As they attempt to make their way back to the camp, they are caught by the two Arabs, Amon and Tasza, who demand they lead them to the base. However, they are lead astray, and the four of them escape their clutches. They make their way back to the camp but find everyone in their consort killed off. As they pick through the wreckage of the camp, Momoko, upon looking at a picture of Elsa’s grandfather at the desert base, recognizes a statue in the picture. She remembers where she’d seen in and leads Elsa, Ada, and Jackie to it. They bid her adieu and enter the ruins.

However, as Momoko makes her way back through the desert, she is stopped by a group of men who demand her water. She recognizes a necklace one man is wearing as hers, learning that they were the ones who attacked Jackie’s and Ada’s camp.

Inside the desert ruins, Jackie, Ada, and Elsa are attacked by desert tribesmen and, during their escape, they enter an area that is deemed forbidden. The three of them fall through the sand and into an underground area, their entry closed off by a collapsing wall, much to the delight of the tribesmen. As they get their bearings, they begin to investigate their new area and realize that they have actually found the Nazi base. The skeletal remains of the Nazis are found as well, including Elsa’s grandfather, who had apparently been murdered (Jackie finds a knife in his back). After reading through the commander’s log, they learn that, upon sealing the gold away, the commander and his men were to poison themselves, thereby keeping the knowledge of the gold a secret. He had had 18 men in his company, including himself, but only 17 corpses are found. Before they can do anything else, though, the wheelchair-bound man suddenly enters the base, flanked by the same men who’d been attacking Jackie time and again, having been lead there by a captive Momoko.

The man in the chair claims to be Adolf, the 18th soldier who defied his commander, but had his legs broken and crippled in the process. As a result, he was the one who’d killed Elsa’a grandfather (his name was on the knife). He demands Jackie and his company to lead them to the gold so he can claim it for himself, but Jackie fights his attackers off. They pursue him and the three girls all throughout the base in one fight sequence after another until, eventually, they are overpowered and are forced to open the base vault.

They are successful in unlocking it and find an almost endless supply of gold bars. The men are overjoyed and begin to grab as much as they can carry, leaving Adolf behind. Adolf then learns, the hard way, that his henchmen plan on keeping the gold for themselves. With that knowledge, he locks his men into the vault, save for two who chase Jackie through the base into an underground hangar complete with a gigantic fan. As they fight, Adolf and the girls try to help him by hitting various buttons and switches, activating the fan in different ways, but as they do, Elsa accidentally hits a button triggering a self-destruct sequence.

As they learn this, they plan out their escape; Adolf intends to stay behind and die in the ensuing blast, wanting to be “with his friends”, but will also use the base’s ventilation system to send them to safety through wind power. Jackie, Ada, Elsa and Momoko take as much gold as they can carry and ready themselves for their escape, but due to the power of the fan and the subsequent burst of wind that sends the four of them flying through the ventilation duct, they accidentally drop the cases of gold. The base then begins to explode and cave in on itself, burying the gold under a huge collapsing sand dune. Ada laments this, but Jackie reminds her that at least they are still alive.

As they continue on through the desert, Ada falls over and drops a single gold bar onto the sand. As Jackie makes for it, a disheveled Amon shoots at them, stopping them in their tracks. Jackie gives him the bar, but he doesn’t want it; they want water instead. Jackie throws his canteen to them and watches, amazed, as they fight over it. Jackie sums it all up pretty nicely, in the end: “It just goes to show what we truly need or want...”

Amon then forces them to find water, having found the canteen to be empty. They begin to search, but don’t realize that they are all completely lost in the desert.

Cast

Hong Kong DVD cover.

• Jackie Chan - Jackie / Asian Hawk / Condor
• Carol Cheng (aka Do Do Cheng) - Ada
• Eva Cobo de Garcia - Elsa
• Shôko Ikeda - Momoko
• Daniel Mintz - Amon
• Aldo Sambrell - Adolf (as Aldo Brel Sánchez)
• Bozidar Smiljanic - Duke Scapio / Baron Bannon
• Jonathan Isgar - Tasza

Jackie Chan Stunt Team

• Benny Lai
• Ken Lo
• Mars (actor)

Box office

Chan said in his biography the movie cost HK $115 million, or US $15 million, the most expensive Hong Kong film at the time. In its Hong Kong theatrical release, this film grossed HK $39,048,711.

On 1,523 North American screens in its opening weekend, it grossed US $4,731,751 ($3,088 per screen), on track to a modest US $10,405,394 final gross.

Awards and nominations

• 1992 Hong Kong Film Awards
  • Nomination: Best Action Choreography

Versions

The film was originally released in Hong Kong in 1991. It had a Cantonese soundtrack and ran at approximately 106 minutes.

• An uncut export version of the film was released in the UK by Entertainment In Video. The VHS was released in 1993, and the DVD in 2001.
• In 1991, Dimension Films acquired the US rights, but it wouldn't be released theatrically until 1997 under the title Operation Condor, with a newly commissioned English dub/score and removing 15 minutes of footage. This version was released on DVD in 1999.^[1]
• In 2004, IVL released an uncut version in Hong Kong. The DVD was anamorphic and included the Cantonese-language soundtrack and English subtitles.

Sequel

The sequel entitled Armour of God III was announced in 2010 and they begun filming in late August 2011, it will be directed by and starring Jackie Chan.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Hong Kong action cinema
• Jackie Chan filmography
• List of Hong Kong films

References

1. ^ "Armour of God Series (Region 3)". DVD Talk. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/19187/armour-of-god-series/. Retrieved 2011-01-30. 

External links

• Armour of God II: Operation Condor at the Internet Movie Database
• Fei ying gai wak at AllRovi