Jackie Chan's new action comedy, Westerns, martial arts and buddy movie is stolen by an excellent performance by Owen Wilson.
China, the Forbidden City, 1881. The princess (A wasted Lucy Liu) who hates her life is kidnapped and held for ransom in Nevada. The three best imperial guards are selected to rescue her. Chan goes along as a he feels responsible (as he failed stop top her)In Nevada, Chan teams up with a train robber named Roy O'Bannon (Wilson), and they rescue the princess with much help from a hot Indian maiden (The actress is called Brandon Merrill and she is hot).
The plot, of course, is only used to get us from one of Chan's Chaplin-esque martial arts sequences to the next, with Wilson's very funny verbal quips. Material like this can be very very bad. Here it is sort of wonderful, mainly helped by Chan's likability and effortless charm and the performance by Wilson. His comic timing is precise, and his character is very hard to dislike.
Chan's character is (As in every American movie he has made to date since the Burt Reynolds led Cannonball Run in 1980) a man of limited vocabulary and much action. Most moviegoers didn't know who Owen Wilson was when this was released. Most people only remembered him from 'Armageddon' after racking their brains, This movie should have made him an A list star. He is too smart and versatile to be packaged within a narrow range tho and he followed this up with Meet The Parents, Zoolander, Royal Tenebaums, Behind Enemy Lines and I Spy before 2003's sequel to this movie. Liu, as the princess, is completely under used, until the final act where she becomes a damsel in distress, a brave and plucky one, but a damsel in distress non the less. Not so boldly portrayed is Merrill's Indian woman,(My God is she hot. It's a shame she has not had an acting role prior or since this movie) who is married to Chans character in a ceremony that nobody seems to take seriously and that the movie itself has clearly forgotten all about by the time the last shot comes around.
China, the Forbidden City, 1881. The princess (A wasted Lucy Liu) who hates her life is kidnapped and held for ransom in Nevada. The three best imperial guards are selected to rescue her. Chan goes along as a he feels responsible (as he failed stop top her)In Nevada, Chan teams up with a train robber named Roy O'Bannon (Wilson), and they rescue the princess with much help from a hot Indian maiden (The actress is called Brandon Merrill and she is hot).
The plot, of course, is only used to get us from one of Chan's Chaplin-esque martial arts sequences to the next, with Wilson's very funny verbal quips. Material like this can be very very bad. Here it is sort of wonderful, mainly helped by Chan's likability and effortless charm and the performance by Wilson. His comic timing is precise, and his character is very hard to dislike.
Chan's character is (As in every American movie he has made to date since the Burt Reynolds led Cannonball Run in 1980) a man of limited vocabulary and much action. Most moviegoers didn't know who Owen Wilson was when this was released. Most people only remembered him from 'Armageddon' after racking their brains, This movie should have made him an A list star. He is too smart and versatile to be packaged within a narrow range tho and he followed this up with Meet The Parents, Zoolander, Royal Tenebaums, Behind Enemy Lines and I Spy before 2003's sequel to this movie. Liu, as the princess, is completely under used, until the final act where she becomes a damsel in distress, a brave and plucky one, but a damsel in distress non the less. Not so boldly portrayed is Merrill's Indian woman,(My God is she hot. It's a shame she has not had an acting role prior or since this movie) who is married to Chans character in a ceremony that nobody seems to take seriously and that the movie itself has clearly forgotten all about by the time the last shot comes around.