Deadly snow chameleons -- gun-toting, white-clad henchmen -- emerge from shallow ditches of powder, unaware that one man is about to foil their theft of nuclear plutonium from a Russian-American double agent of Chinese nationality. That man -- Jackie Chan -- leaps into a tree, somersaults down a willowy branch and drives the first henchman into the snow like in a whack-a-mole boardwalk game. Jackie lands on the snow as "henchman #2" swings around to fire his gun; he lets go of the branch and the rifleman is smacked by recoiling foliage. Stunned "henchman #2" then accidentally shoots "henchman #1" as Jackie dives into a snow trench. In the next few minutes, Jackie will: duck the flying chunks of an exploding helicopter, be thrown from a snowmobile, dodge bullets as he snowboards off a cliff, grasp the landing rail of a helicopter midair and finally plunge into a frozen lake when the copter he's dangling from is torpedoed.

The presence, timing, and stature of the participants in this sequence from First Strike evaporate when reduced to print. Movies have done for the body what the printing press did for the mind -- preserved its virtuosity. At last the temporal body can be archived with more than crumbling bones; we are amassing a museum of physical dexterity on film and video. Celluloid provides enduring evidence that the flesh can move as fast as the mind; in a flash, faster than our own visual perception. This is prodigal genius executed through the body instead of a composition, blueprint, book, or epic song. It's a good thing Jackie Chan has lived in the 20th Century, because his speed and wit could never be immortalized by mere words.

Chan has distinguished himself from other action stars through the lighthearted humor that punctuates even his most aggressive fight scenes. His indebtedness to silent film comics like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin is something the actor happily acknowledges. The Chan tribute book Dying for Action charts similar scenarios in Keaton and Chan films such as: "Buster fights swordfish underwater, The Navigator (1924) -- Chan fights shark underwater, First Strike(1996)." [*(127, Witterstaetter: 1997)*] But Keaton's and Chaplin's sight gags arise from an even older physical performance tradition -- Commedia dell' Arte.