JACKIE CAN!

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Some movie stars measure their worth by how many millions of dollars they make. Jackie Chan, Asian action-star extraordinaire, measures his by how many of his bones he has fractured while executing his films' incredible stunts. Let him count the breaks: "My skull, my eyes, my nose three times, my jaw, my shoulder, my chest, two fingers, a knee-everything from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet." Chan broke an ankle while jumping onto a moving Hovercraft in his new film, Rumble in the Bronx, which opened in time for Chinese New Year last week. Fans queued up around the world.

So who is Jackie Chan? In the U.S., only a figure with a small if intense cult. His volcanic comedies are not shown on the pay-movie channels, not released in theaters except for the rare showcase, like the "Super Jackie" retrospective now at New York City's Cinema Village. But back home in Hong Kong-throughout Asia, in fact, and in South America and Australia-Chan is movie-action incarnate. He has made 40 films since 1976, when he was promoted as the new Bruce Lee. Now, at 40, Chan is that and more: the last good guy and, arguably, the world's best-loved movie star.

In American terms he's a little Clint Eastwood (actor-director), a dash of Gene Kelly (imaginative choreographer), a bit of Jim Carrey (rubbery ham) and a lot of the silent-movie clowns: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Says Chan fan Sylvester Stallone: "Jackie has elongated a genre that had grown pretty stale. He's infused films with humor and character-driven story while giving audiences these extraordinary stunts that are unparalleled anywhere in the world."

In Hollywood, special visual effects define the action film. In Hong Kong, stunts-the human body spinning and bending without a computer's help-define the Chan film. By displaying his death-baiting acrobatic virtuosity, he has returned the action movie to the actor. "Audiences know that if they want special effects, they go see Schwarzenegger," he says. "If they want a tough movie, they go see Sly. If they want an action movie, they choose Jackie Chan-because I do a lot of things that normal people can't do."

To cross a busy street, normal people might go to the corner and wait for the green. Not Jackie. Standing on a balcony in his Police Story II, he jumps onto a truck going one way, onto a double-decker bus going the other way and then through a window into the second floor of the villain's headquarters.

In his biggest hits (Drunken Master, Project A, Police Story, The Armour of God) and their sequels, Chan has scooted across burning coals, eaten red-hot chili peppers, swallowed industrial alcohol. He has bounced down a hill inside a giant beach ball and leaped from a mountaintop onto a passing hot-air balloon. As weapons he has used bicycles, rickshas, chairs, plates, a hat rack, a ketchup dispenser, overhead fans and Chinese folding fans. Bad guys have depantsed him, strapped a ton of tnt to his body, doused and scalded him, set him afire, dumped him down a well, hanged him naked in the town square. There's a truly masochistic resilience at work here: Jackie takes a licking and keeps on kicking.