Shanghai Knights
AKA: Shanghai Noon 2
Released: 2002
Rated: PG-13
Length: Approx. 114 min.
Main Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Aiden Gillen, Fann Wong, Tom Fisher
Oh, what a bad movie this is. Jackie Chan can't seem to make a good American movie. I don't know whose fault that is, but it's probably the idiot American producers.
This movie begins with Chon Lin (Fann Wong) and her father (Kim Chan) guarding China's emperor's seal. Chon Lin is Chon Wang's (Jackie Chan) sister. Anyway, some assassins come in and kill Lin and Wang's father and take the seal. The assassins are some of the Boxers you hear about in relation to China's history (think "the boxer rebellion) and they're lead by an Englishman named Lord Nelson Rathbone (Aidan Gillen). Why? Because the script writers don't know how to write a decent script. More on that later.
Thus, Lin must avenge her pa's death and she chases down the freak in London, after alerting her bro in the states to the situation. He arrives too with his dopey sidekick, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson), a lustful jerk that puts Chris Tucker's character to shame. Everything Roy thinks about deals with women and how to get them in bed. One of his main schemes is to be a male prostitute.
But back to the story. It seems Rathbone is the 10th in line for England's throne, and thus he made some kind of deal to steal this seal for Wu Chow (John Lone) because Chow wants to be emperor of China and needed the seal to cause an uprising. Rathbone needs Chow to shoot the royal family when they come out to view a fireworks show put on by Rathbone. What makes no sense is why they sought out each other. Rathbone should have hired some local criminals to do the deed and then killed them...and Chow could have gotten the seal by himself. HELLO!? Does anyone in Hollywood have a brain!?!?
There's also a boy that Wang and Roy run into when they first reach London. He shows up frequently thereafter and does little to advance the storyline.
Okay. So, Lin and Roy fall for each other for no reason whatsoever. Roy and Wang have a falling out. There's various sexual dreams by Roy. And then we finally reach the finale with Chan kicking the bad guys butts and Roy basically just hanging around in the background saying stupid things. Even when death is staring Roy in the face, all he can think about are women.
The only saving grace in this movie is the fighting sequences. Most of them are cool. Lin has a couple of good fights too that are quite amazing. They have quite a bit of "WOW" factor to them.
The Good Stuff:
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The fighting sequences |
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Wong and Chan are cool |
The Bad Stuff:
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Owen Wilson sucks as an actor |
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Plenty of swearing |
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Sexual humor abounds |
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Violence |
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Some skanky outfits |
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An annoying kid |
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Plenty of scenes where it seemed the writers had written themselves into a corner and just made up stuff to save Chan or Roy, like when they're in a police carriage and somehow Charlie (Aaron Johnson), the aforementioned annoying kid, shows up with some police keys and frees them |
The Dumb Stuff:
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Lots of really dumb jokes. They are not funny...they ALL fall flat. | ||||||||
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The names of the characters are supposed to be funny:
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| Wang and Roy dance around naked in a surreal pillow fight with a bunch of women and this weird balding guy who is never introduced and never shows up in the film again. Why is this here? It serves no purpose. Lin finds them doing this stupidity and still ends up loving Roy at the end. Yeah, if I was a woman, then Roy would be the kind of guy I would want to. Right. |
This movie is just plain awful. It is a detriment to the Jackie Chan fans of the world. Don't watch it if you can at all possibly avoid it. The fight sequences do not redeem the movie.
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COMEDIC FACTOR: n/a
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