New Line’s release of Jackie Chan’s First Strike is salvo number three in Chan’s invasion of America. (Miramax’s version of the 1991 Operation Condor, the last film on which the star also took a director’s credit, is due out in May.) Like its predecessors, Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop,…

Critics normally don’t spend a lot of time praising producers; in a medium that is both commerce and art, our job is to evaluate the art side of the equation. And the assumption is that while producers are raising, counting or raking in moolah, a movie’s aesthetics are in the…