Skiptrace

It is a goofy but fun adventure comedy. Travelling from Hong Kong to Macau, then to Russia and back again, it is chock full of Chinese cultural references, gorgeous terrain, and wonderful landscapes. But the film is essentially just a platform for Jackie Chan to relive his 90s stunt antics once more. He jumps over things, rolls under things, slides down things, climbs up things, kicks people, jokes around, and he also sings. Though he does not do any of it with the precision or passion of his heyday. Knoxville plays Knoxville and injects some humour at times, but mostly just does as he's told as a guest in China. Fan Bingbing is useless. As ever a mannequin with no facial expression and ghostly white skin. Her female co-stars, Lan-xin Zhang and Shi Shi, outshine her in beauty and talent.

The film isn't great. It has a choppiness to its editing and sloppiness to its choreography. It isn't directed well by Renny Harlin. Actually I'm not even sure if he directed it - he doesn't appear in one of the outtakes at the end - and the film's HK filming style makes me think Chan was more the director and instead Harlin was used for promotional purposes. The style and themes explored in Skiptrace are reminiscent of 80 and 90s Chan films, so if this is all he can produce at his age, then I'll take it over the absolute crap that he's put out in recent years (such as CZ12 and Dragon Blade). This isn't a perfect movie, and there is still plenty of Chinese-pandering with Knoxville made to look a simpleton and Chan to be the honorable and wise Asian hero (well, it is Knoxville, so the filmmakers didn't need to do much to pull it off), but the film has energy, action and fun in bucket loads which should appeal to Chan die-hards.

B-

How much of the film is in Mandarin (or, basically, any other language than English)? I am thinking about seeing it in the Netherlands this week, however Dutch subtitles won't be of much help if there are many parts that are not in English.

Hard to tell because I could see their lips were speaking Mandarin but English was coming out, so it depends which copy they are showing in Holland. The beginning ten minutes was subtitled because they were speaking Mandarin or Cantonese. Not sure which. But when Knoxville enters the film, there is much more English, and when it's just Knoxville and Chan, it is only English. It's just when there is a scene with the bad guys (more near the start and the end), it was dubbed in English. Not sure if you will get that dubbing or whether they will just use subtitles.

I would say just go and see it. The worst-case scenario is that you will not understand some dialogue, which is about 15% of the film. But as it's a Jackie Chan film, you will be able to understand it visually.

This film also has two opening credits. One which the production company put on, and the other that felt as if the distributor put it on. So it feels stuffed and over-tinkled with, especially with relation to post-production.

Thanks

This was an OK movie which was structurally broken and is predictable from start to end. Jackie Chan does his same shtick. Knoxville is much more tamed than I expected, which is a bummer because I expected that Knoxville will provide comic timings and Chan to do more action.

5/10