Movie
Review | Shanghai Knights
Reviewed by: Brian
Orndorf
I listed 2000’s “Shanghai Noon” as the 10th worst
film of that year. Now, three years later, a sequel has arrived. It
has a new director, and the ballsy intention to follow up a picture
that wasn’t really a huge financial success (domestically speaking)
in the first place. Can time, effort, and some fresh eyes redeem this
obnoxious, unwanted installment in a franchise nobody is asking for?
When his father is killed by an evil English politician looking for
a priceless family seal, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) is forced to leave
his comfy job as sheriff of Carson City, Nevada, to go to London in
pursuit of the killers. On his way, Wang decides to pay his old buddy,
perpetual liar and schemer Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson), a visit to
request help, and the two are soon off to merry old England to
investigate. When they arrive, the two cowboys learn that the ways of
the English are quite different than they’d anticipated, and that
Wang’s sister, Lin (Fann Wong), has also arrived from China to help
with the fight.
As with “Shanghai Noon, “Knights” is a film that one must be
specifically in the mood to watch. It’s a shameful, particularly
unfunny film that is determined to wring every last drop of forced
whimsy and cartoonish violence it can out of the thin premise.
Thankfully, “Knights” doesn’t have the singular punishing vision
of director Tom Dey (“Showtime”) to guide the proceedings. His
replacement is David Dobkin, the filmmaker behind the sly and often
gut-busting Vince Vaughn starrer “Clay Pigeons.” Dobkin isn’t
the first director that comes to mind to helm a Jackie Chan slap-fest
like this film, but he does what he can within the strict comedy and
action rules set up in “Shanghai Noon.” If this lackluster film
can claim anything as a positive, it is that, at the very least, it looks
better. Courtesy of cinematographer Adrian Biddle (“The World Is Not
Enough”), who knows a thing or two about slick widescreen
photography, “Knights” has a lush feel about it, almost as if each
frame was ripped out of a graphic novel. The golds, reds, and blacks
are delicious, and provide nice eye candy when the rest of the film
just isn’t all the interesting.
All the colors in the world couldn’t help this script, though,
which allows the silly ironic plotting and punishing Owen Wilson (who
is so good with Wes Anderson and Ben Stiller, yet so atrocious without
them) improvs to return without mercy. The “Shanghai” just
aren’t funny, as much as the production seems to think they are.
“Knights” provides the same historical wackiness as “Noon” so
smugly did, this time having Roy and Wang meet a young Charlie
Chaplin, accidentally slam into Stonehenge, complain that there is no
future in automobiles, and helping Sir Arthur Conan Doyle come up with
the Sherlock Holmes character. This type of humor is just too wacky
for my tastes, and it’s made even worse by the film’s insistence
on nudging you vigorously to laugh when the characters come into
contact with something historical. Another frustrating element is the
film’s constant deployment of modern touches for a film set in 1887.
While this type of comedy is essentially the point of the two
“Shanghai” films, I can only stomach so much before The Who’s
“Magic Bus” begins playing on the soundtrack, and Roy and Wang
start making “Midnight Cowboy” and “Singing In The Rain”
references. That I draw the line on.
Of course, all this is just a pie crust to the real reason we are
here: to see Jackie Chan fight. The action sequences of “Knights”
are a little fiercer in nature and more fanciful in design than they
were in “Noon.” The carefree and slapsticky Chan choreography is
still something of questionable merit, but is presented here with more
imagination and running time. As tiring as it is watching Chan, Dobkin
does deliver a nifty climax, which has Chan fighting another Chinese
assassin (the legendary Donnie Yen, “Iron Monkey”) aboard a boat,
and Roy fighting for his life on the hands of Big Ben during a
celebratory fireworks display for the Queen of England. The picture
really comes alive at this late juncture, and it infuriated me that so
many earlier sections of the film were wasted on flatlining comedy and
fights that veered too far into silliness.
It is an improvement, no matter how slight. I just hope this upward
trajectory can continue if they decide to make a “Shanghai
Mourning,” or something ridiculous like that.
Grade: 3/10
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