DIRECTOR
David Dobkin
SCREENWRITERS
Alfred
Gough
Miles Millar
PRODUCERS
Gary Barber
Roger Birnbaum
Jonathan Glickman
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Adrian Biddle
MUSIC
Randy Edelman
EDITOR
Malcolm Campbell
CAST
Jackie Chan (Chon Wang)
Owen Wilson (Roy O'Bannon)
Fann Wong (Chon Lin)
Donnie Yen (Wu Yip)
Aaron Johnson (Orphan Kid)
Aidan Gillen (Rathbone)
Tom Fisher (Doyle)
Gemma Jones (Queen Victoria)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 100m
U.S. release: February 7, 2003
Video availability: TBA
Official website
See also:
- Operation
Condor
- Rumble
in the Bronx
- Rush
Hour
- Shanghai
Noon
- Supercop
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Back when I reviewed Shanghai
Noon (2000), I was sufficiently charmed by it to write,
"This is one summer movie I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel
to." So, a little late (Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson were
too busy with other films to get around to my request right away),
we have Shanghai Knights, whose plot, I promise you, matters
not at all. I trust that comes as a shock to no one. The Shanghai
movies exist solely to exploit the unstable but winning chemistry
between the sincere, physically adept Chan and the ironic, verbally
adroit Wilson. They're good for each other: Chan's seriousness
of manner gives Wilson something to react to, and Wilson has
a calming effect on Chan.
Shanghai Knights picks up our heroes separately: Chon
Wang (Chan) is a sheriff out West, shaking his head at the glorifying
pulp novels written about his former partner Roy O'Bannon (Wilson),
who's out in New York. Back home in China, Chon's father is killed,
and his Imperial Seal stolen, by a nasty Brit amusingly named,
in one of many old-movie nods, Rathbone (Aiden Gillen). Rathbone
is in cahoots with the renegade Wu Yip (Donnie Yen); with the
power of the Seal, they plot to become the King and Emperor of
their respective countries. So Chon and Roy -- along with Chon's
younger sister Lin (Fann Wong), a formidable martial-arts practitioner
herself -- head off to London to get their hands on the Seal
and on the pair of murderers.
Wait, didn't I say the plot
didn't matter? Killing off the father of one of the two leads
in a comedy sequel seems a bit hefty (and leads to a bad scene
where Chon mourns his father and stares at a photo of Jackie
Chan as a boy posing with someone with an obvious PhotoShop paste
job of the face of the actor playing his father), but once the
action moves to London things pick up considerably. Director
David Dobkin doesn't forget why we go to Jackie Chan movies:
even though Chan, a year shy of fifty now, obviously uses a stunt
double for some of the more perilous gags, he can still choreograph
with the best of them, and there's a terrific fight scene in
which Chan uses everything at his disposal against a pack of
London brawlers. Chan grabs an umbrella, opens it, and fends
off his foes as Dobkin quietly insinuates "Singin' in the
Rain" onto the soundtrack.
Indeed, the movie has a lot
of fun not only with movie history (there's an orphan sidekick,
reminiscent of a British Short Round, whose identity I'll leave
you to discover) but with British history circa 1887, the film's
setting. An eager young Scotland Yard inspector named Doyle (Tom
Fisher) may ring some bells for mystery fans in the audience,
and when Lin goes off on her own in the chilly night of Whitechapel
she runs into -- and speedily dispatches -- exactly the person
you want her to. (Some of the movie is like a slapstick riff
on Caleb Carr's The Alienist.) Mayhem also unfolds inside
Madame Toussaud's Wax Museum, and in and around Big Ben; one
sequence involving a revolving fireplace triggered by pushing
a statue's breasts manages to quote from two Indiana Jones
movies at once.
Shanghai Knights is fun, though a little draggier than
its predecessor, and Owen Wilson doesn't have as many zonked,
insecure moments here as he got to run with in the original.
(He does have a priceless expression of "I can't believe
this is happening to me, but I'm gonna roll with it" during
an erotic dream sequence.) Jackie Chan's best moment here is
a swipe from Rush
Hour, where he had to fight multiple attackers while
trying to keep an urn from falling over; here he turns the tables,
and the sequence really outdoes more than swipes. The movie is
better than it had to be (and even looks better, what with ace
cinematographer Adrian Biddle on board), and the mood of it is
just amiable doodling; you don't feel the pressure of a sequel
to a big summer hit -- the movie seems to have been made simply
because these guys should get together again. The last scene
has them talking about hitting Hollywood and getting into the
movie business, and once again I'll say it: I won't at all mind
seeing Shanghai Stars, or whatever they end up calling
it.
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