Armour of God II: Operation Condor
Encyclopedia
Armour of God II: Operation Condor 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.
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.
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.
2011, it will be directed by and starring Jackie Chan.
Martial arts film
Martial arts film is a film genre. A sub-genre of the action film, martial arts films contain numerous fights between characters, usually as the films' primary appeal and entertainment value, and often as a method of storytelling and character expression and development. Martial arts are frequently...
-action film
Hong Kong action cinema
Hong Kong action cinema is the principal source of the Hong Kong film industry's global fame. It combines elements from the action film, as codified by Hollywood, with Chinese storytelling and aesthetic traditions, to create a culturally distinctive form that nevertheless has a wide transcultural...
, directed by and starring Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan, SBS, MBE is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer. In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts...
. It is the sequel to his hit Armour of God. It was produced by Golden Harvest
Golden Harvest
Golden Harvest is a film production, distribution, and exhibition company based in Hong Kong. It played a major role in becoming the first Chinese film company to successfully enter the western market for an extended period of time, especially with the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan...
/ Paragon Films.
It was filmed primarily in Madrid, Spain
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. While the opening scenes where Asian Hawk went Powered paragliding
Powered paragliding
Powered paragliding, also known as paramotoring, is a form of ultralight aviation where the pilot wears a motor on his or her back which provides enough thrust to take off using an adapted paraglider or paramotor wing...
was shot in Tagaytay City
Tagaytay City
The City of Tagaytay is a second class city in the province of Cavite, Philippines. Only away from Manila via Aguinaldo Highway, it is one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Tagaytay City provides a good view of the Taal Volcano...
over Taal Lake
Taal Lake
Taal Lake is a freshwater lake in the province of Batangas, on the island of Luzon, Philippines. The lake is situated within a caldera formed by very large eruptions between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago. It is the country's third largest lake...
, Cavite
Cavite
Cavite is a province of the Philippines located on the southern shores of Manila Bay in the CALABARZON region in Luzon, just 30 kilometers south of Manila. Cavite is surrounded by Laguna to the east, Metro Manila to the northeast, and Batangas to the south...
, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. The scene where he stole the gem from the cave tribe and escaped by zorbing
Zorbing
Zorbing is the recreation of rolling downhill in an orb, generally made of transparent plastic. Zorbing is generally performed on a gentle slope, but can also be done on a level surface, permitting more rider control. In the absence of hills some operators have constructed inflatable, wooden or...
was shot in Mount Macolod
Mount Macolod
Mount Macolod, sometimes called Mount Makulot is a mountain located in north-west of Cuenca, Batangas, Philippines.This mountain is a tourist attraction to the municipality. The mountain is about tall and it is also located next to Taal Lake.Mount Makulot, a 600-meter high volcanic rock wall, is...
in Cuenca
Cuenca
Cuenca may refer to:In Ecuador:* Cuenca, Ecuador, capital of the Azuay Province and named in honor to the spanish city.** Cuenca basin , the drainage basin** Cuenca basin , a geologic structural basinIn the Philippines:...
, Batangas
Batangas
Batangas is a first class province of the Philippines located on the southwestern part of Luzon in the CALABARZON region. Its capital is Batangas City and it is bordered by the provinces of Cavite and Laguna to the north and Quezon to the east. Across the Verde Island Passages to the south is the...
.
This film is even more akin to Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
than Armour of God, in that it features Chan's character Condor ("Asian Hawk" in the US release) battling against a former Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
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
- Jackie ChanJackie ChanJackie Chan, SBS, MBE is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer. In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts...
- Jackie / Asian Hawk / Condor - Carol ChengCarol ChengCarol Cheng , commonly referred to as Do Do, is an actress and host from Hong Kong.-Biography:Cheng began her career in the 1970s working on a number of Television Broadcasts Limited series. She also hosted the Hong Kong version of the game show The Weakest Link from 2001-2002...
(aka Do Do Cheng) - Ada - Eva Cobo de Garcia - Elsa
- Shôko Ikeda - Momoko
- Daniel Mintz - Amon
- Aldo SambrellAldo SambrellAlfredo Sanchez Brell , known as Aldo Sambrell, was a Spanish film actor, director and producer who made over 150 appearances in film between 1961 and 1996....
- Adolf (as Aldo Brel Sánchez) - Bozidar Smiljanic - Duke Scapio / Baron Bannon
- Jonathan Isgar - Tasza
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
- 199211th Hong Kong Film Awards-Best Film:-Best Director:-Best Screenplay:-Best Actor:-Best Actress:-Best Supporting Actor:-Best Supporting Actress:-Best New Performer:-Best Cinematography:-Best Film Editing:-Best Art Direction:-Best Action Direction:...
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 FilmsDimension FilmsDimension Films is a motion picture unit currently a part of The Weinstein Company. It was formerly used as Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax Films, to produce and release genre 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. - 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 AugustAugust
August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of seven months with a length of 31 days.This month was originally named Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first...
2011, it will be directed by and starring Jackie Chan.
See also
- Hong Kong action cinemaHong Kong action cinemaHong Kong action cinema is the principal source of the Hong Kong film industry's global fame. It combines elements from the action film, as codified by Hollywood, with Chinese storytelling and aesthetic traditions, to create a culturally distinctive form that nevertheless has a wide transcultural...
- Jackie Chan filmography
- List of Hong Kong films