GO WEST, HONG KONG

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE FLASHBULBS WERE POPPING two weeks ago when Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan showed up at a Hollywood theater for the premiere of Broken Arrow, the new John Travolta film. Make that the new John Woo film, for Hong Kong's No. 1 action auteur directed this $60 million thriller. Chan, whose gonzo melodrama Rumble in the Bronx hits 1,500 screens this week, was at the premiere to wish his home-town colleague well and to personify the friendly invasion of Hollywood by Hong Kong talent. Only one problem: by the time Jackie got inside, all the seats were taken. The world's most engaging star had to return to his hotel.

One has to wonder: Will Hollywood ever make a place for Hong Kong cinema? Woo and Chan and the flock of successful Chinese actors and directors now making deals in Los Angeles may find that the hurdles of race and culture are hard to clear. For example, the seven Oscar nominations Sense and Sensibility received last week did not include one for its Taiwanese director, Ang Lee.

If anything can enlighten Hollywood, it is the box office. Hong Kong films attract audiences worldwide, and Broken Arrow earned a burly $15.6 million its first weekend. Even a myopic mogul can see that the brisk, visceral Hong Kong style of acting and action could be the shot of adrenaline Hollywood needs to shake off its creative funk.

Broken Arrow, a bomb-ticking chase movie about a daredevil pilot (Travolta) who steals two nuclear weapons, shows how easily the two cinemas can coexist. It flies at the speed of Macho 2 while allowing Woo to unpack his full cinematic arsenal: overhead shots, plenty of steamy atmosphere (Travolta smokes a lot), Cuisinart editing of the action scenes, slow motion to prolong the jitters and, for dialogue scenes that other directors would stand flatfooted and watch, lithe little tracking shots. If film school were fun, Woo would be the nutty professor.

In the Graham Yost script, Travolta is a bad guy for the same reason Woo makes films the way he does: it's so darn much fun. Travolta and his rival, Christian Slater, are so steely that when they salute their arms make metallic whooshing sounds. And as Slater's only partner in saving the world, Samantha Mathis is just as tough. In an early face-off, he holds a gun to her head; she holds a knife to his neck. It's Woo's version of meeting cute.

Woo made his name with such incendiary devices as Bullet in the Head and Hard-Boiled--furious meditations on manhood as a criminal state of grace. Broken Arrow is jokier, less resonant than those dark epics, but it's still a swell night at the movies. The audience gets as pulverizing a workout as the stars do. Or rather, the stars' stunt doubles, who deserve Oscars for best supporting masochism.

Jackie Chan, of course, is no sissy: he does all his own death-taunting stunts. His movies, like The Armour of God and the Police Story series (available in some U.S. video stores), are comedy fantasies, but they are also documentaries of the pain a great star will endure to please his audience. They have something else: a bracing athletic grace. The fights are as exuberant and abstract as the dances in a Busby Berkeley musical. And Chan is a superb physical artist, whether leaping off cliffs or hanging from a bus by an umbrella handle. As novelist Donald E. Westlake put it, "Jackie Chan is Fred Astaire, and the world is Ginger Rogers."

In his new film, the first to get a wide release in the U.S., the Bronx is Ginger Rogers. (The film was actually shot in Vancouver, British Columbia; thus the scenic mountains, and thugs with pasty skin and a predilection to say "Eh?" a lot.) As the guy who cleans up a ghetto, helps a crippled kid and does battle with a rampaging Hovercraft, Chan shows off the muscle of a superhero and the charm of a deft comedian. He doesn't swagger or threaten, flash his Magnum .44 or talk dirty to women; he's Gentleman Jackie.

Rumble audiences may titter at the naive plot (the director is Stanley Tong), but they will gasp at Chan's lithe, lightning reflexes when he takes on five creeps in a deli or executes a jump from one high building to another. You watch these impossible stunts with fear and gratitude for the hardest-working man in show biz. To see your first Jackie Chan movie is to fall in love with what the movies once were: a comic ballet of bodies in motion.

If not up to the best work of either man, Broken Arrow and Rumble serve as introductions to the spirit of Hong Kong cinema, even as they serve notice to U.S. moviemakers. Think you can do it better? Just watch! Hollywood will watch and, if there's any justice, give Chan and Woo the best seats in the house.