Newcomers to the joys of Hong Kong cinema may be wondering why middle-aged martial-arts star Jackie Chan has begun to pop up in several stunt-filled action movies each year. But Chan's movie legacy extends much further back than Rumble In The Bronx, his big U.S. breakthrough; Chan's saturation of the American market is just the latest phase of a long career. I Am Jackie Chan is clearly aimed at Americans, a marketing tool to further indoctrinate Yanks with a load of facts the rest of the world already knows. Ghostwritten at a grammatical level so simple that no age group will feel left out, Chan's autobiography reads like a novelization of so many sub-rate movies. But Chan's writing skills (or those of the writer he employed) aren't particularly relevant to his life, a rags-to-riches story that begins with the tortuous training techniques of the Beijing Opera, finds him working as a stuntman for the Shaw Brothers and Bruce Lee, and ends with him entrenched as an international action star. Surprisingly, I Am Jackie Chan barely addresses the bigger-budget, stunt-filled spectaculars for which Chan is known, instead sticking mostly to his experiences as a young boy in the opera, where he made many lifelong friends (like frequent co-stars Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao) and learned the skills that made him famous. As with most books of this nature, it often seems that the whole story is not being told: Chan makes references to his wife and his dangerous dealings with the Chinese mob, but neither subject is given much space. Instead, Chan remains faithful to the happy-go-lucky character he has created in the movies, a good guy who even finds positive things to say about his beatings at the hands of his disciplined master. As with Chan's movies, some of the best material is saved for last in a section that lists his favorite stunts, favorite fights, and all the times he's hurt himself, including the relatively simple stunt during the filming of Armour Of God that almost killed him.