**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson. Donnie Yen, Aidan Gillen, Fann Wong, Tom Fisher, Gemma Jones, and Kim Chan
Directed by David Dobkin & written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
2003 PG13
The core of “Shanghai Knights” is the same as a million million other movies, usually with words like “Lethal,” “Cop,” “Heat,” and “Death” in the title. It is what it is: two goofballs bumbling their way through an adventure. They fight evil-doers, trade one-liners, and, ninety minutes later, the movie’s over. There’s something of a new spin on such genre requirements as the Two Guys, the Villain, The Girl, and the MacGuffin.
“Shanghai Knights” is the sequel to “Shanghai Noon.” I haven’t seen “Shanghai Noon,” but I don’t think seeing it is a necessary prerequisite to understanding a flack as vacuous as “Knights.” “Noon” is about an Imperial Chinese guard (Jackie Chan) circa 1880 who joins an American adventurer (Owen Wilson) for a caper in the Old West. In “Shanghai Knights” the two of them go on a caper in London to avenge Jackie’s dead father (Kim Chan, who played the Ancient on “Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues”) and retrieve a MacGuffin. Fathers and sisters and brothers are always getting killed and needing revenge. In both movies, kung-fu and hilarity ensues.
What makes “Shanghai Knights” worth its weight in numchukus is the comic styles and timing of Chan and Wilson. Each has a different approach to humor, yet they are so jovial and likeable, and they play off one another so well. Jackie combines kung-fu, Charlie Chaplin, and the antics of a critter from Merrie Melodies. His stunt-fighting is world renowned, but perhaps more important than his proficiency is his humanity. Yes, he is famous for incorporating objects from his surroundings into his cartoon-ish battles, and in “Shanghai Knights” he gets a hold of furniture, wax dummies, a globe, and enough umbrellas to spoof “Singin’ in the Rain.”
But what I noticed was how much effort he throws into his fights. He gives us pain, strain, and genuine exertion, huffing and grunting. Lesser heroes (like, say, Lara Croft) are above their situations, but Chan creates the illusion that he’s always just survived by the skin of his teeth. He’s refreshing, after seeing so many recent martial arts sequences that just go on and on, without the combatants so much as working up a sweat. His command of English isn’t great, but it doesn’t need to be because his facial work hurls us so directly into what he’s feeling.
Working at more of a distance, with an aw-shucks, open-faced glee, is Owen Wilson. He doesn’t accomplish much in the movie besides make fun of everything, or at least give us amusing reaction shots. He’s nonchalant about how he tosses off lines like “I can see our hotel from here” while dangling from an impossible precipice. While Jackie is honorable and determined, Owen is the movie’s resident scoundrel and half-coward. His implausible escapades are chronicled in a series of dime novels that pop up throughout the movie. “Why did you write those lies?” Jackie interrogates him, to which Owen responds “I’ve always had low self-esteem.”
Little attempt is made to 1880-ize the characters, and we hear expressions like “freak out,” “crappy,” “damn cool,” “kick your ass,” and “who loves you baby?” amidst contemporary rock music. The Guys sneak around castles, find secret passages, wear lame, implausible disguises, and fall under the gaze of paintings that have had the eyes cut out. They escape from a burning barn and the villain yells “get them!” to his cronies. The heavies tie Owen and Jackie up over a Pit of Death when killing them outright would make a lot more sense. Two Chinese are alone together speaking English just so Owen can listen in. I didn’t notice that for two days. Our Guys meet every major Brit of the 1880s, give or take a decade, and they crack jokes about beefeater guards, bad English teeth, and spotted dick. Historical inaccuracies pile high: I think the machine gun is invented twenty years late on the wrong side of the Atlantic, and the automobile appears ten years early, also on the wrong side of the pond. It’s also worth noting that the image of Sherlock Holmes with pipe and cap are the work of a playwright who adapted the Holmes’ stories, perhaps as late as the 1900s, and not Conan Doyle. I mention none of this to be critical, but simply to give you an idea of the movie’s tone.
“Shanghai Knights” is a good-spirited movie. Owen joins Jackie on a quest for absolutely no reason except that they’re friends. The movie has a body count of three and is rated PG13 more for its brothel and crotch humor. Bad guys are beaten into unconsciousness using the movie rules that anything that hurts us can knock us out when increased, and anything that kills us (except shooting and stabbing) does the same when decreased. It’s nearly impossible not to like Our Guys in “Shanghai Knights,” but wouldn’t we appreciate them more if they were ensconced in a real movie adventure, rather than a caper with only three plot points and a tangent in the middle? I guess I function on the notion that the better a movie’s serious parts are, the funnier the jokes about it will be.
Finished September 6th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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