CZ12

Elizabeth Kerr started her review by saying, “The latest globetrotting romp by martial arts action star Jackie Chan, opening Dec. 20 in Hong Kong, is the kind of mindless, silly romp the multi-hyphenate has become known for. CZ12 (sometimes Chinese Zodiac) couldn’t be a more inauspicious swan song if he tried, if such rumors are to be believed.” As a mercenary tomb raider trying to find ancient Chinese sculptures Chan is starting to show his age. With the exception of one main fight sequence he leaves the larger load to his younger costars and depends on either green screen for his large moments – or does them from a standing position. That isn’t what we wanted to see when we watch a Chan film.

Kerr noted, “Clocking in at just over two hours and with a remarkable dearth of the martial acrobatics Chan is known for, there’s little to recommend the film for anyone other than Chan completists.” The film was released in 2012 in Hong Kong the same week as the better family films of “Wreck-It Ralph,” popular box office disaster of the last “Twilight” film, and only days before “Les Misérables.” Kerr said, “It’s going to be an uphill battle for this vehicle, particularly in light of recent comments in the press (“taken out of context” naturally) where Chan whined about Hongkongers being too quick to exert their right to free speech. It hasn’t endeared him to the public and a backlash wouldn’t be at all surprising.”

Still, it’s a Jackie Chan movie and his fans all over are legion. Kerr mentioned, “CZ12 is aggressively multi-national and designed for maximum market appeal: the cast hails form South Korea, China, the USA and France, is spoken in four languages and was shot in Paris, Taiwan and the South Pacific among others. Chan is still a brand even if it is a diminished one, and he broadened his reach when he went down the slapstick road with 1995’s Rumble in the Bronx (complete with Canada Post mailboxes visible in the background). The kids in the audience rarely stopped giggling, and so reasonably healthy box office returns should be expected in Asia where slapstick plays well, and the content will make it an enormous hit in China.” Overseas the film is going to have to depend on viewer concern and brand loyalty. “CZ12” should just go away from Chan’s work sooner rather than later.

As the leader of a clever group of Indiana Jones-type archeological crooks, JC, played by Chan, has a good living stealing rare antiquities from abandoned areas of the planet and giving them to auction houses. When the evil president of the MP Corporation (Oliver Pratt) hires him to find the last of the missing bronze zodiac animal heads from the old Summer Palace in Beijing, he meets the annoying, self-righteous Coco (Yao Xingtong), a member of an annoying, self-righteous activist group wanting to return national treasures to their rightful owners – which is mostly China. They end up on an island where a French woman that’s really going through a bad moment, Katherine, played by Laura Weissbecker, says her grandfather’s ship became stranded coming back from China. Kerr mentioned, “Great, more stolen treasure for Coco to get indignant about! After about five minutes of introspection JC finds his soul and decides to steal for the right reasons.”

Whatever someone believes about historical modesty and national rights, “CZ12” is not the place to debate that, and after the third lecture on the foreign raiders and auction houses that come from the 19^th century loots, the subject just becomes tiresome. Kerr said, “No matter how valid the argument, it’s cocooned inside some truly awful paint-by-numbers filmmaking with dull characters, wooden acting and at least two moments of dreadful compositing.” No one thinks Chan will come out with the next “Citizen Kane,” but we do look for a certain level of enjoyment. This is mostly lazy, with a lot of lapses in logic and continuity. A final warehouse fight with Lawrence’s henchman Vulture (Alaa Safi) in and around a sofa set and then a group of thugs is the creative highlight, however JC’s right hand Bonnie (Zhang Lanxin) and her opponent (Caitlin Dechelle) is far more enjoyment. Kerr noted, “If Chan were half the patriot he claims he is, he’d put his considerable resources as a producer into finding the next Jackie Chan; Jet Li is only slightly younger, leaving Donnie Yen as Hong Kong’s sole marital star.” If this ended up being Chan’s last movie it would have been easy to see why. Even the end credit outtakes were not enjoyable as the previous ones.

As you can see, I wasn’t really impressed with this film. As with a lot of other trilogies, this one is the black sheep of the trilogy. It is definitely one that I would not recommend, sadly, especially if you were fans of the last two movies. Sorry, but this is one that you can give a past, even though I think they are planning a sequel.

Well everyone, thank you for joining in on “Jackie Chan Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed it and stay tuned next month where I will look at a famous franchise that Jackie Chan starred in. Now I know I said this is the end of “Jackie Chan Month,” but that’s only because I want to review the franchise that he starred in. Stay tuned next month to find out which one I’m referring to.

Operation Condor

The fact that Jackie Chan does every single one of his own stunts shows a type of intensity to the ability of watching his movies: An actual person in actual time is performing something dangerous. Roger Ebert said, “There's an element of Evel Knievel to it. And also an element of Buster Keaton, because Chan is above all a silent comedian, who depends on broad humor and timing to make action comedies in which the violence is secondary ("No guns!'' he likes to shout).”

Even though Chan does his own stunts, obviously they are stunts – safety precautions are taken, and camera angles are chosen to make things look more difficult than they are. Sometimes there is even a type of awkwardness which makes the realism even more helpful.

For example, early in “Operation Condor,” released in 1991, Jackie puts on a hang-gliding uniform powered by an airplane engine, starts it up, and runs with increasing anxiety across a field, trying to get airborne. Eventually, he does. Ebert noted, “In a slicker action picture, the flight would have been effortless. It's more fun to watch Chan sweating a little. And that's really him in the air.”

Ebert admitted, “There are a couple of other stunts in the film that had me seriously impressed. In one of them, Chan is hanging from a beam near the roof of a warehouse. A car catapults through the air, straight at him. He swings up out of the way and the car misses him. It looked to me as if trick photography wasn't involved; there was a real car, and perfect timing. In another stunt, he leaps from a motorcycle speeding off a pier, and grabs a safe hold on a fisherman's net. And there's a wonderfully choreographed fight above odd flat moving steel platforms high above a hangar floor.”

Even the little moments are a type of excellence. Chan jumps against a wall, pushes off to the similar wall, and leaps over a gate in the wall. The stunt joins an acrobat’s skill with a dancer’s style. Then there are scenes where he jokes himself, like when he rescues a baby carriage in the middle of a fast chase, or when he makes a quick escape by bouncing down a hill inside what looks like a giant inflated volleyball.

“Operation Condor” was originally released in Asia in 1991 with the prefix “Armour of God II.” Chan is the writer, director and star. The plot is about as hilarious as most of his movies. A European count tasks him on behalf of the United Nations to find Nazi loot – a fortune in gold buried in the North African desert near the end of World War II. Chan is given a sidekick, an agent named Ada (Carol Cheng) and eventually collects two more beautiful women: Elsa (Eva Cobo De Garcia), who is the granddaughter of the Nazi who hid the gold, and Momoko (Shoko Ikeda), an innocent soul they encounter in the desert, who is searching for the meaning of life and death, and keeps a pet scorpion.

Ebert noted, “It's a little dizzying, the way the movie switches locations from the desert to Arab bazaars to fleabag hotels to a really elaborate set representing some kind of long-lost Nazi headquarters with a built-in wind tunnel that stars in the final action scene. (There is a bomb in the buried headquarters, and in a nod to period detail, it has a countdown timer that uses analog hands instead of a digital readout.)” The screenplay takes a little break for as minimal dialogue as possible (“Look out behind you!” “Take this!”) and gives a couple of teams of bad guys who motivations are barely told – but then what do we really need to know, except that they want the gold and are enemies of Jackie? Ebert noted, “Most action pictures are, at some level, a little mean-spirited: They depend upon macho brutes getting their way. Jackie Chan is self-effacing, a guy who grimaces when he's hurt, who dusts himself off after close calls, who goes for a gag instead of a gun. He brings that light-hearted persona to the fact that he is also a superb athlete and does amazing things in every film.” There’s a type of innocence to everything, and an enjoyment of performance. Half of the time, you see yourself putting on a silly grin.

If you liked “Armour of God,” then you should see this movie. Remember; make sure to see “Armour of God” first since that technically came before. “Operation Condor” is the sequel, even though it was released in the USA first. Despite that, if you’re a Jackie Chan fan, this is the one for you, especially if you’re a fan of older, classic Chan films.

Look out next week for the latest in this trilogy in the finale of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Trolls World Tour

Today I checked out “Trolls World Tour,” which was released on “Video On Demand” today, and I will let everyone know what I thought about it.

In 2016, “Trolls” gave us the glittery, polychromatic world of the eponymous small, singing, dancing beings. They had a rather nice, though predictable, story helped by the handful of pop songs that worked into the story. Now the trolls are back in “Trolls World Tour,” which enlarges the world of the trolls, including its musical collection, and is all the better for it. While the movie still has a similar colorful artistic, this film introduces a lot more shades of grey while telling nice lessons about tolerance and leadership.

“Trolls World Tour” starts by introducing a new colony of trolls, whose techno music, is interrupted by the hard-rock trolls, led by punk-rocker Queen Barb, voiced by Rachel Wood. Barb makes a plan to bring the trolls together by uniting them under rock – and expunging every other type of music. From there the movie takes us back to the colony of the trolls we know from the first film – labeled here as the pop trolls – where the group learns about Barb’s plans and that there are, actually, six tribes of trolls whose musical differences made them separate long ago.

Even though her father (Walt Dohrn) warns her and Branch (Justin Timberlake), Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) can’t imagine of a place where Barb’s purposes could be bad. She believes in the idea of uniting the trolls again and believes Barb wants to celebrate their differences like she does. That makes her go off to find Barb and help her on her journey. She’s teamed up by a hesitant Branch and passengers Biggie (James Corden) and Mr. Dinkles (Kevin Michael Richardson). As they travel they stop by the places of the classical music trolls, the country music trolls and the funk trolls.

Cynthia Vinney said in her review, “Barb’s desire to oppress those with other musical tastes and Poppy’s inability to listen to anyone else’s concerns are thinly veiled metaphors for the evils of intolerance and the need to listen to others, even those you might not agree with. Although these aren’t the most revolutionary ideas, the movie presents them in a fun music-filled way that will appeal to both children and adults.”

The different type of music all over the movie makes it even more charming. Even though the pop music that helped the first movie is still here, it’s really nice to hear the voices of a wide range of musical artists voicing different characters. Kelly Clarkson sings a sad country song, Anderson .Paak raps a lesson about the trolls’ dangerous history, rock star legend Ozzy Osborne plays Barb’s aged father and classic singers Mary J. Blige and George Clinton appear as the King and Queen of the funk trolls.

As everyone knows, “Trolls World Tour’s” was tasked to being the first studio movie to not be released in theaters and instead be released directly on “Video on Demand” with the coronavirus epidemic. Vinney said, “Many will be watching to see how the movie fares, with some suggesting that if Trolls World Tour does well, it could have long-lasting implications for theatrical movie-going. It’s easy to see the movie having success on-demand. After all, it’s the first new big-budget movie available to viewers in almost a month, plus it has the added appeal of keeping antsy house-bound children occupied for an hour and a half.” When seeing that, Universal’s choice to release “Trolls World Tour” for home viewing makes sense. However, that also means it’s a task that won’t work for every upcoming large movie, and will be unlikely to destroy the traditional theatrical release.

Vinney said, “Ultimately, Trolls World Tour is an exuberant blast of big-screen movie energy that those who choose to watch it at home will appreciate. Fans of the first Trolls will find more to love here, and those who were only lukewarm on that movie are likely to appreciate the expansion of the trolls’ world.” Even though every movie that did not get delayed due to the coronavirus, it works for the small world of “Trolls World Tour,” which actually is an entertaining and hopeful distraction from what we’re experiencing currently.

If you saw the first movie and liked it, it wouldn’t hurt to check this sequel out On Demand. It’s a nice little harmless family flick with a lot of diverse songs in here that should get kids and maybe even parents up and dancing. Check it out and see for yourself.

Thank you for joining in on today’s review. Stay tuned next week for the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Armour of God

Originally titled “Armour of God,” Jackie Chan’s 1986 expensive, enjoying version of the “Indian Jones” series was so popular in Asia that it led to a slightly related sequel, “Operation Condor.” After the latter was released in America, the earlier film had gone through a title change to make it look like the sequel, and went straight to US video in 1998 as “Operation Condor: The Armour of God” (with a completely different title on the video box art, “Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods!”).

Stealing an ancient sword from an African tribe, adventurer Jackie, played by Jackie Chan, known as the Asian Hawk, uses martial arts and amazing stuntwork to effect his escape. After auctioning the sword, he is reunited with his old friend, pop-singer Alan (Alan Tam), to help rescue Alan’s girlfriend Laura (Rosamund Kwan), the girl that came between them when they all played in a band together. TV Guide said in their review, “Demanded as ransom is the legendary Armour of God, of which the sword is part.” Borrowing the Armour from an affluent Count – on condition that they take his daughter May, played by Lola Forner, along on the journey – they fight with the kidnappers, a group of monks who live in a mountain monastery. Sneaking inside the iron grip, they easily rescue Laura, not knowing that she has been drugged and tasked to retrieve the Armour.

That’s what she does, bring a drugged Alan with her. TV Guide noted, “Jackie breaks back into the monastery and rescues them both, along the way fighting battalions of monks and a group of wickedly acrobatic leather-clad women.” In the end, he rather accidentally dynamites the monastery, escaping by diving off the mountain onto a hot-air balloon controlled by Alan, Laura and May.

TV Guide mentioned, “In 1982, Eric Tsang had directed pop singer Sam Hui in the first of the immensely popular ACES GO PLACES films--a globe-hopping, stunt-filled, action comedy series featuring a suave, international rogue/jewel thief and his inept comic rival. For ARMOUR OF GOD, Tsang was enlisted as director and traveled to Yugoslavia along with numerous of Hong Kong's filmmaking elite.” Filming stopped when on the second take of a small stunt, Chan fell from a tree and cracked his skull open, needing an emergency surgery where he needed a permanent plug. (The accident and its result are shown during the end credits). When filmmaking continued, Chan was director.

Playing a pop singer was barely difficult for Alan Tam, who is one in real life. Several of his songs (one a duet with Chan) and footage from an actual concert are thrown into the film. TV Guide mentioned, “With filming taking place in France and Austria, they naturally turned to Lola Forner, who had previously appeared with Chan in WHEELS ON MEALS (1983) and was, according to Chan, "the only European actress we knew."” Her character completely is absent about two-thirds of the way in, when the serious fighting is about to start. Not long afterwards, with Jackie entering the fortress for the second time, the film starts escape velocity, moving straight from one amazing set piece to another, with no moment between to take a break. TV Guide ended their review by saying, “The opening scene, recognizable as Eric Tsang's original footage by Chan's uncommonly short haircut, is another gem of wild, sustained action.”

Another classic of Jackie Chan’s that everyone needs to see. If you haven’t seen it, don’t read this review. Go out and see this right now because it’s a must for every Jackie Chan fan.

Look out next week when I look at the sequel, “Operation Condor,” in “Jackie Chan Month.”

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Sword of Destiny

Tonight I finished up watching the sequel “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Sword of Destiny,” released on NetFlix in 2016. I decided to watch this while I worked out, since I can’t go to the library for the time being, and since I finished this tonight, I thought I would let everyone know what I thought about it.

Roger Moore started his review by saying, “Years have passed and the love triangle at the heart of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is long gone. But the fights are even more amusingly spectacular and the visuals — every frame a painting — are as sumptuous as ever in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Sword of Destiny,” the sequel to the surprising 2000 Oscar winning hit.”

Director Ang Lee does not have his name in here, but actor turned stunt choreographer and director Yuen Woo-Ping keeps this kind of tired sequel flowing and moving, with the help of a willing and able (to fly) cast.

“The Sword of Destiny” has Yu Shu Lien, reprised by Michelle Yeoh, over 50 and out of the noble but deadly love triangle that caused her actions nearly two decades ago. She has decided to help protect this magically-gifted green sword from falling into the wrong hands.

That would be the West Lotus gang of Hades Dai, played by a balder, bulkier and dubbed Jason Scott Lee.

Yu Shu Lien is one of the last followers of “The Iron Way,” and she is tasked with not only protecting the sword, but with taking in a student – the agile and pale martial arts mistress Snow Vase, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo. They capture one of Hades Dai’s masked villains, played by Harry Shum Jr., and bide their time.

Because there will be help. Moore said, “It’s led by Yu Shu Lien’s long lost lover, now traveling the land in a wide-brimmed hat like some lone gunman of the Old West.” He is “Silent Wolf,” and the great martial artist Donnie Yen revives himself to play him.

Yuen Woo-Ping gives Yen a grand entrance, and jumps into one fight after another, helped by a newly formed gang of younger fighters such as “Silver Dart Shi” (Juju Chan) and Turtle Ma (Darryl Quon) and Flying Blade (Chris Pang), each with a certain skill.

Moore noted, “The fights and the wire work — You will believe a martial artist can fly! — are epic and beautifully staged. A scuffle on a frozen lake, beatdown in a forest roadhouse and the battle royale finale are real knee-slappers.”

Moore continued, “Yeoh and Yen wear a wonderful world weariness. The new players, stuck with switched baby stories, hidden birthmarks and such, are left high and dry.”

Because the story of this sequel is just plain silly up to the point of bland. Moore said, “We sit through the usual montage of inscrutable training rituals (“A predictable attack has a predictable outcome.”) and brace ourselves for the blood that will be shed as the field is winnowed down for one final clash between the best of the best and the best of the worst.”

Moore continued, “The plot’s a yawner even if the action isn’t, all of it basically a set-up for a younger generation of wire-savvy young performers to move center stage in this not-really-a-saga. The world this is set in — super-saturated colors, pristine sets — feels surreal, less lived in than the best Jet Li/Jackie Chan/Donnie Yen kung for pictures.”

Still, if the only martial arts movies you’re watching are “Crouching Tiger” movies, it’s good to know that they’re keeping up with the type of action, even if they’re not actually creating it.

Overall, this is a decent sequel. The reason why is because there is more dialogue in this movie and not enough action. However, when the action does occur, it’s really exciting. Another drawback is that unlike the first movie, this sequel was shot in English but dubbed in Mandarin. I don’t understand why that was, but that was really distracting. However, if you have a NetFlix account, go ahead and watch this movie if you saw the first movie. It wouldn’t hurt, so the choice is yours.

Stay tuned this Friday for the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Rumble in the Bronx

Here’s how Roger Ebert started his review of “Rumble in the Bronx,” released in 1996, “The movie uses the flimsiest of plots as an excuse to string together astonishing action sequences in which Chan exhibits the physical grace and athletic control of a Buster Keaton.”

The flow of the movie becomes predictable. There’s mechanical dialogue (involving the throwaway story), villains show up, and Jackie Chan starts to fight. He uses the martial arts to beat up the entire gang, yes, but he also uses whatever tools and props are nearby. In “Rumble in the Bronx,” there’s a part where he uses refrigerators, another one where he improvises with furniture, one where there’s a perfect timing with a knife and another fight – in a grocery store – where he does something amazing with a grocery cart.

Jackie Chan is famous for always doing his own stunts and his fans really wait for the end of his films, because they know that while the closing credits roll they’ll see outtakes of the stunts that went wrong. “Rumble in the Bronx” has that at the end. There’s one scene where Jackie Chan jumps off the top of a building and lands on a fire escape landing across an alley and two or three floors below. He broke his ankle there. In the outtakes, we can see ambulances arriving, blood all over, and lots of laughs as Chan hides a cast under his blue jeans for the next day’s shooting.

However, it’s not the stunts themselves that make “Rumble in the Bronx” great. It’s Jackie Chan’s high spirits and catching personality. Ebert noted, “Here's a Chinese man, about 40, who resembles nobody so much as Tom Hayden, and whose nose looks as if it is broken regularly.” He’s enjoyable but not handsome, athletic but not tall, and his acting in this movie is obligatory. He’s waiting for the action like everyone else.

He doesn’t see himself with great seriousness. He gets the joke and he looks to really enjoy himself. Ebert said, “George C. Scott said a sign of a good actor is his ability to project "the joy of performance." Chan breathes that joy. There's a lighthearted air about "Rumble in the Bronx" that's infectious, if you open yourself up to it.”

This is not a masterpiece. The movie is just simply silly. It takes place in the Bronx but was filmed in Vancouver. Ebert said, “Its Bronx has a golf course with mountains in the background. After scenes that are obviously not set anywhere near New York, it throws in a canned shot of the Manhattan skyline, as reassurance.” The story is about Jackie visiting his uncle (Bill Tang), helps him sell his grocery store, and then makes friends with the young woman (Anita Mui) who has bought it. This is simply a clothesline for the stunts and action.

There’s accidental humor in the motorcycle gang that are the villains for the first half of the movie (before becoming Jackie’s friends against the real villains). Ebert noted, “They look and talk like "Baywatch" rejects.” In one scene, they fake an attack on a young woman, played by Francise Yip, simply to get Jackie in their trap. They give him a real beating. Later, after Jackie has become friend’s with Yip’s little brother, played by Morgan Lam, who is wheelchair bound, she admits, “Sometimes we go too far.” Elsewhere, the other villains think stolen diamonds are hidden in the cushion of the wheelchair, etc.

Ebert said, “Any attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile. Don't tell me about the plot and the dialogue. Don't dwellon the acting. The whole point is Jackie Chan - and, like Astaire and Rogers, he does what he does better than anybody. There is a physical confidence, a grace, an elegance to the way he moves.” There is humor to the choreography of the fights (which are never too violent).

He’s having fun. If we allow ourselves to enjoy the movie in the correct way, so are we.

This is the movie that brought Jackie Chan into international stardom. Because of this, Jackie Chan is popular in the USA. If you haven’t seen this movie and want to see Jackie Chan in another hilarious movie, this is the one you don’t want to miss. It’s one of the funniest movies that Jackie Chan has been in. See it for yourself and get a good laugh.

Stay tuned next week when I start looking at a trilogy that Jackie Chan stared in the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”