Shanghai Knights (2003) September 21, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Comedy, Action, Non-Asian, 2000s films , trackbackDirector: David Dobkin Main Cast: Jackie Chan; Owen Wilson; Fann Wong; Donnie Yen Territory: USA
An assassin kills Chon Wang’s (Jackie Chan) father, stealing the Imperial seal. When Chon learns of this, he heads directly to New York to collect his share of the loot he had acquired at the end of Shanghai Noon, only to find that Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson) has already squandered it and is now a waiter-cum-gigolo. Together with Chon’s sister Lin (Fann Wong), they head off to London in search of the men responsible for the murder and stumble upon a plan of regicide that will affect both England and China.
Firstly, Shanghai Knights is a completely different animal from its predecessor. There are surprisingly few references to the first film and the knowing nods to pop culture icons have become sledgehammer blows. David Dobkin takes over directorial duties from Tom Dey for this outing, and this may be the reason the film’s whole attitude is so different while retaining the same principal stars and the same scriptwriting team.
The action is shifted from the Wild West to Victorian England, much to the film’s detriment, I feel. The England depicted in Shanghai Knights is full of tired clichés – with street urchins, Jack the Ripper, bad teeth and an extremely forced reference to spotted dick that wouldn’t have passed the early stages of a Carry On script. The main problems, though, is the film’s annoying tendency to make every character turn out to be a fictional rendition of a real person and the fact that the film is riddled with anachronisms, geographical anomalies and factual errors. I’m not one for picking faults in films, but these anomalies are so glaringly obvious they can’t be ignored. I’ve since learned, in doing a little research for this review, that these mistakes are all intentional and are intended to be “fun” - which I find a little doubtful. Even so, this makes the film even more annoying in my opinion.
The inclusion of Fann Wong as Chon Wang’s sister is tolerable – she’s very easy on the eye – but the fact that Lucy Liu’s character is dismissed with a single line also seems very strange. Mind you, that’s more explanation than Chon’s wife gets (remember her?). That’s really the problem with this film, I think – it just seems so slapdash and half-baked. There are a couple of good gags in here (one of which is lifted directly from the prequel) and Owen Wilson’s delivery is, as usual, top-notch.
Jackie’s setpieces suffer from the same problem as Shanghai Noon – I feel there is too much here that we’ve seen before in his Hong Kong films. There are a couple of standout moments, as there always are, and the Singing in the Rain reference is something Jackie’s probably been trying to crowbar into one of his films since the eighties. There is, however, a surprising lack of actual fighting from the star. Instead, the action mainly involves Jackie trying not to fight, settling for disarming and/or incapacitating his enemies.
Donnie Yen appears in this film – a fact that surprised me even on second viewing. While the match up of Yen vs Chan is many action fanboy’s wet dream, the result is literally forgettable. However, Aidan Gillen’s comic-book villain Rathbone (in one the film’s countless and pointless references to Sherlock Holmes) is worse.
I don’t know why these US Jackie Chan film franchises insist on fish-out-of-water scenarios all the time. I could have quite happily taken another film in a Wild West setting, and I think there would have been more than sufficient material to be gotten out of the characters. Instead we have a film that feels strangely apart and disconnected from its predecessor. That said, I’d have preferred a third instalment of this over a third Rush Hour film even before I’d seen the result. It seems unlikely, but maybe one day Chan and Wilson will reprise their characters and return the Wild West where they belong.
Comments»
Wait, didn’t Jackie’s dad alreadyget killed in the first one (on the train)? Or am I confused?
Very weak film, but as you say, the sister is easy on the eye!
Adrien - I think it was Jackie’s uncle in the first one (I guess it’s bad luck to be a male relative of Jackie’s in these films) but what got me about that is the fact that he didn’t seem to give a damn about his death for more than about 60 seconds. Actually, he didn’t seem too bothered about his father either. Well, if your male relatives are always being murdered, I suppose you get used to it…
James - I was absolutely staggered to discover she’s actually slightly older than me. Easy on the eye AND fantastically preserved…