Review: The Netflix comedy “Skiptrace” wants to be the film so much that it isn’t – cinema, film, film review

Considering how strong the PC world is now, it's a miracle that the buddy cop film still exists. In this genre, typically two unlikely characters – sometimes one is a cop, sometimes they are both, and most often they are of two different races – are forced to investigate a crime together while gradually becoming friends. Bless.

In this installment of the trope, Jackie Chan (recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award) plays Bennie, a Hong Kong detective who loses his partner, to whom he promises to look after Samantha's (Fan Bingbing) daughter. As the years pass, Bennie continues to pursue El Matador, who he believes rules the entire Hong Kong underworld and is responsible for his partner's death.

On another side of the world, Johnny Knoxville's all-American Connor Watts is hanging upside down in a bowling alley. The fast talker and hit with the ladies managed to get into trouble with the Russians, who captured him after gambling in Macau. Unfortunately, there he saw something he wasn't supposed to see and met someone he wasn't supposed to meet – Samantha. Bennie is forced to get Connor back after Samantha gets into trouble, and so begins a long journey from Russia to Hong Kong.

Chan is of course no stranger to this series of films, having previously starred in the Rush Hour trilogy with Chris Tucker. But where those films (or at least the first two) succeeded and this one failed is in its devotion to silliness and shameless stereotypes, knowing full well that it's all for the purpose of comedy. However, Skiptrace never quite manages to combine action and comedy.

Since Chan is a legend, there are some great action sequences, including a scene set on a wooden structure built on a river and some rather absurd fight choreography involving Russian puppets. Knoxville doesn't have much to do in these scenes, and when he tries to evoke emotion, it just fails. Similar to “The Last Stand,” in which he starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, he simply doesn’t bring any oomph to a sidekick role.

As the two main characters travel through different countries to get to their final destination, there is an integration of local cultures and traditions that, while interesting and a little crazy, seem seedy to the film's Western audience. At one point there is an Adele sing-song scene that is honestly just plain creepy. These moments are more set pieces or sources of humor than narrative propulsion, and in the end this is another problem with the film: it packs too much into it and, at almost two hours, it's just too long.

Skiptrace isn't the worst original film that Netflix has offered us, nor was it the worst film of 2016 overall. As far as box office returns go, things didn't go too badly. If you have about 100 minutes to kill and are up for something to completely turn your brain off, you should definitely give this a try.