Hey folks, Harry here with our third review from our spy, Birdie Num Num (His first was for MAGNOLIA and his second was for BRINGING OUT THE DEAD), and so we can begin to track his reliability pretty closely. He doesn't spoil the film, but says that it's quite a bit of fun. He likes it as much, or even a bit more than RUSH HOUR and compares it favoribly to ARMOR OF GOD and PROJECT A-2. Fun films I have to say... but when, if ever, shall we see the equal to the genius of DRUNKEN MASTER 2? Sigh... Here we go...
Harry...
Caught a research screening last night in Thousand Oaks, CA that I think is going to be one of the sleepers of summer: SHANGHAI NOON, starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.
All of us Geek Jackie Chan fans can breathe easy: this is a more than worthy follow-up to RUSH HOUR. In a lot of ways, it's reminiscent of some of Jackie's old-fashioned lighthearted films like ARMOR OF GOD and PROJECT A-2. Because at its core, this movie is an old fashioned Western (think the old Charles Bronson/Toshiro Mifune movie RED SUN, but played for laughs). Just the shot in the arm the genre needs after the wretched monstrosity that was WILD WILD WEST.
But as cool as Jackie is, the real revelation in this movie is Owen Wilson. Now Owen Wilson already has a spot in Geek heaven reserved merely for co-writing/starring in BOTTLE ROCKET and co-writing RUSHMORE, not to mention his awesome cameo in CABLE GUY and his chilling turn in the sadly neglected MINUS MAN. This movie, however, is the one that's going to put him over the top and make him a star. He comes off like nothing so much as a young Jack Nicholson here and the audience, which seemed to really like this movie, DEFINITELY flipped for him.
The plotline is standard stuff: Jackie comes to America with a regiment of Chinese Imperial Guards to recover runaway Princess Lucy Liu (not as sexy as she was in PAYBACK, but then again, how could she top herself in that?), bringing a chest of gold with him as ransom. The train they ride on is robbed by Wilson's gang. Jackie foils the robbery, but is separated from the other guards. He ends up partnering with Wilson to find her, with Wilson really hoping to get his hands on the gold. You get the idea.
The tone is irreverent, but not annoyingly so, managing at its core to stay true to all that's great about the Western genre. The movie looks great, like old Technicolor, but could stand to use more inventive Jackie action. Maybe this can be fixed in editing. Jackie gives a funnier performance than he did in RUSH HOUR and seems more relaxed and comfortable here. He even gets to bed down with a babe-a-licious Indian woman in in one of the movie's funnier sequences. However, the real centerpiece of the movie is the chemistry between Jackie and Owen Wilson, which (in my opinion at least) is even stronger than the chemistry Jackie had with Chris Tucker in RUSH HOUR.
I assume the soundtrack was temp, but it seemed to have a good style, mixing a lot of Morricone with classic ZZ TOP and AEROSMITH ("Back in the Saddle," baybee). I know this sounds sacreligious, but it works. There's also a montage featuring Kid Rock's "Cowboy" that was funny, but God help me if I have to hear that song again....
Overall, quibbles aside, this is a good old fashioned crowd-pleaser. It's not going to change the world, but it will make your summer more enjoyable, will keep the Jackie fans satisfied, will finally make Owen WIlson the star he's destined to become. Most importantly (I'm crossing my fingers on this one), it might just be the movie to make Westerns "cool" and viable again.
BIRDIE NUM-NUM signing off....
