10 Great Martial Arts Films That Feel Like Jackie Chan Movies

While Jackie Chan has a lot of classic movies, there are also a lot of great martial arts movies that feel like lost additions to the actor’s oeuvre for a variety of reasons. Alongside Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan is one of the most influential martial artists in cinema history. The screen veteran’s earliest starring roles date back to the late ‘70s, when the popularity of Bruce Lee’s work led to a huge demand for martial arts movies. Chan starred in 1978’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, one of the earliest martial arts hits to combine comedy and kung fu.

Chan’s subsequent movies Drunken Master cemented this lighter, more playful tone that made his movies stand out against the works of Lee, Sonny Chiba, and the Shaw Brothers. While Jackie Chan still makes great movies even now, his legendary hot streak came in the ‘80s. During this era, Chan became a leading light of Hong Kong action cinema with countless police dramas and action comedies. Stunt showcases like Project A, the My Lucky Stars movies, and the Police Story franchise saw Chan perfect a blend of acrobatic stunt work, brushing fight scenes, and physical comedy that countless filmmakers have since replicated.

10 Tiger Cage 2

This Donnie Yen vehicle could be a lost Jackie Chan movie

Tiger Cage 2 might star Donnie Yen, but the sequel feels like it could easily be a Jackie Chan movie. This Hong Kong action comedy blends jaw-dropping stunts, frequent fight scenes, and a buddy comedy setup as Yen’s loose cannon cop Dragon Yau accidentally gets embroiled in a money laundering scheme alongside Rosamund Kwan’s divorce lawyer Mandy. While some Jackie Chan movies aren’t comedies, Tiger Cage 2 sharing the knockabout slapstick stylings of the My Lucky Stars franchise means the sequel seems like a missing movie from the star’s sizable back catalog.

9 Kung Fu Hustle

Stephen Chow’s cartoony action calls to mind Chan’s early oeuvre

Director/ actor/ martial arts star Stephen Chow has never hidden his love of Chan’s work, with many of Chow’s early movies riffing on Chan’s most successful hits. However, while the likes of Forbidden City Cop owe a debt to Chan, 2005’s breakout hit Kung Fu Hustle is Chow’s best distillation of Chan’s cartoony appeal. Unlike Chan’s most famous movies, Kung Fu Hustle uses CGI to augment its action. However, like Chan’s work, Kung Fu Hustle’s fight sequences are more focused on cartoony absurdity and goofy gags than drama and violence.

8 Ong Bak

Tony Jaa’s breakout movie also combined parkour and martial arts

While Kung Fu Hustle is a loving tribute to the lighter side of Chan’s oeuvre, 2004’s franchise-spawning Ong Bak is a compelling homage to the brutal physicality of the star’s work. While Chan’s movies often maintained a comedic edge, many of his stunts were genuinely extremely dangerous and a lot of his darker movies feature some intense fight sequences. Ong Bak’s simple story of a martial artist retrieving a statue’s head is mostly an excuse for Tony Jaa to recreate the awe-inspiring free-running and bone-crunching fights of Chan’s early movies.

7 Mad Monkey Kung Fu

This Shaw Brothers action epic is similar to Chan’s movies

Before director Lau Kar-leung made Chan’s legendary 1994 sequel Drunken Master II, the iconic filmmaker produced another masterpiece in 1979. Despite its title, Mad Monkey Kung Fu isn’t the knockabout farce viewers might expect. Instead, this story of a martial artist training a young urchin to avenge him gets surprisingly dark at times. However, Mad Monkey Kung Fu’s fight sequences are as impressive and inventive as anything from Chan’s career peak and Lau Kar-leung’s chaotic blend of tones is as successful as it was in his later Chan collaborations.

6 The Magnificent Butcher

Sammo Hung’s early hit was designed to cash in on Chan’s success

Any list of movies that feel like Chan’s forgotten releases would be incomplete without Sammo Hung. As frequent collaborators, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung made numerous movies together during Hong Kong action cinema’s golden age. Before these, 1979’s The Magnificent Butcher was a calling card for Sammo Hung that piggybacked off the success of Chan’s Drunken Master. The Magnificent Butcher was an explicit attempt to replicate Drunken Master‘s formula and, from its threadbare plot to its hilarious set-pieces, this gambit is an undeniable success.

5 District 13

This French thriller prioritizes stunts and fights like Chan

2004’s District 13 is a dystopian thriller set in near-future Paris, where the suburbs are overrun by armed drug dealers and a few acrobatic heroes must single-handedly retrieve a nuclear bomb these criminals have somehow stolen. That synopsis might make the movie sound nothing like a Jackie Chan movie, but District 13’s focus on free running ensures that it feels like a missing installment from the Police Story series. The athletic talent on display here is incredible, and the blend of martial arts and parkour leaves District 13 seeming like one of Jackie Chan’s lesser-known movies.

4 Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon

1990’s silly martial arts hit revisits Chan’s blend of action and comedy

Released while Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan were still working together on the My Lucky Stars movies, 1990’s Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon feels like a spinoff from this action-comedy franchise. Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon takes Chan’s well-worn buddy comedy routine and applies it to the story of two detectives tasked with defeating a murderous drug lord. Of course, the plot is just an excuse for Sammo Hung and his co-star to engage in some incredible stunt work and fight sequences that call to mind Chan’s most inspired outings.

3 Chocolate (2008)

This underrated martial arts drama shares the appeal of Chan’s movies

2008’s Chocolate stars Yanin Vismitananda as Zen, a martial artist with developmental disabilities who uses her skills to collect debts from criminal gangs that owe her ill mother money. Chocolate is a bruising thrill ride from the same director as Ong Bak and, like that earlier hit, its thin plot is used to showcase the star’s considerable fighting prowess. In that regard, Chocolate feels like a female-led spin on one of Chan’s action-heavy, story-light outings from the ‘80s.

2 Encounters of the Spooky Kind

This wild action comedy horror hybrid boasts hilarious fights

Although Jackie Chan missed out on making Three Dragons sequels due to his busy Hollywood career, the star’s collaborations with Sammo Hung remain the stuff of legends. 1980’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind is a rare Sammo Hung movie that focuses on supernatural threats, with the star battling vampires, demons, and ghosts in a goofy blend of action, comedy, and horror. While few Chan movies feature this level of paranormal activity, the slapstick chaos of Encounters of the Spooky Kind resembles Chan’s later 1983 hit Fantasy Mission Force.

1 Dance of the Drunk Mantis

This hit was promoted as a Jackie Chan movie despite the actor’s absence

1979’s Dance of the Drunk Mantis is the movie that feels most like a missing Jackie Chan release, and that is because it is a spinoff from one of the star’s biggest successes. Dance of the Drunk Mantis picks up where Drunken Master left off, with a bizarre and disjointed plot that sees Chan’s trainer from the earlier movie struggle with his new adopted son. While sillier and stranger than Drunken Master, Dance of the Drunk Mantis features just as much impressive stunt work and fight choreography as Jackie Chan’s big hit from a year earlier.