Starring: Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Bingbing Fan
Directed By: Renny Harlin
Plot: A chinese cop (Chan) teams up with a gambler (Knoxville) to stop a crime lord called The Matador.
What Works: Virtually nothing except for a few well choreographed action sequences. There’s something always entertaining about watching a good Jackie Chan fight sequence, even in a completely terrible film. Also, I’d say Bingbing Fan is charming as usual, so there’s something.
What Doesn’t Work: Fucking Renny Harlin directed this. What happened to Renny Harlin? There’s nothing here to suggest a director with any talent was on board. There are abrupt cuts, weird shots and transitions, and a general lack of “direction”, the thing that Harlin is supposed to be doing. The film doesn’t make a ton of sense. It has so many really dumb sequences, like the Rollin In The Deep moment where Jackie Chan starts singing the song, then everyone starts singing it. It’s stupid. Horses pooping also, not funny. There’s even redubbed dialogue, and not for Chan, but ffor Knoxville. The film, aside from the plot being generic, yet still not making any sense. There are secondary characters that are introduced, and then forgotten about. The dialog is awful, not helped by Johnny Knoxville, whose career really needed to end a long time ago. Somehow, we’re keeping him alive and giving him lead roles in Renny Harlin films. It is such a cheesy, terrible action comedy. It’s like watching a Funny or Die sketch that was intended to be terrible to poke fun at the genre. Then you realize it’s not a Funny Or Die sketch, it’s a real film, that was intended to entertain audiences. It doesn’t. It’s so bad, it actually makes me angry that I even saw it.
Final Word: I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone. It’s one of the worst films of the year. There’s a reason that this film didn’t get a wide theatrical release in the US, but I’m also concerned that the Chinese box office for this film suggests that the Chinese audience doesn’t give a crap about the quality of the films they watch.
Final Grade: F
