| ashearer@onlineathens.com
The combined stack of lifelong emergency reports by Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville would probably be ten times as extensive as the script for their new action comedy “SkipTrace”, but that's exactly what it is about.
The film will soon be released in the United States after being successful in the Chinese box office in summer. The film begins with Chan as Hong Kong police officer Bennie, who is on a throwing frame and faces his partner Yung (Eric Tsang), who has buckled up a bomb. After he has promised to take care of Yung's daughter Samantha (Bingbing fan, “X-Men: Future is a thing of the past”), Bennie observes how his comrade is the direct episode of the deeds of a mysterious criminal who is only known as “the Matador” , sacrificed. Nine years later, Bennie and Samantha still work hard to get closer to the truth, but the arrival of the American player Connor Watts (Johny Knoxville) could offer a solution if he does not kill them all before.
At the age of 62 it is understandable that the chan we see in “Skiptrace” does not show as many of the typical dangerous stunts and meticulously choreographed combat scenes for which the western audience of the early 90s like “Rumble in The “knew Bronx” and “Supercop” or even in his later US hits “Rush Hour” and “Shanghai Noon”. The reason that we didn't see much of Chan in the past decade is not that he retired or has fallen out of favor with the ticket buyers; He just wanted what every actor would do in his position: roles that challenge his acting spectrum instead of taking the skull. As a result, he has been shooting excellent Chinese dramas for some time, in which he plays criminals, gangsters and other characters for which Hollywood apparently didn't want him.
In the end, Knoxville takes over most roles in “Skiptrace”, whereupon his years as the main actor in the television and feature film series “Jackass” definitely prepared him. Like Chans former co-stars Chris Tucker and Owen Wilson, Knoxville offers a strange background for the rather strict methods of his film partner, but the advantage here is that he is also ready to accept falls and let yourself be rolled down from a cliff Face and opens doors with his face. Chan does not exactly fail, because “Skiptrace” is an almost uninterrupted road movie that moves from one exotic place to the next and enables the couple to measure themselves in several complex sequences on expensive -looking films with the bad guys be torn down happily.
The icing on the cake on the I is director Renny Harlin, a man who learned one or two things about turning action films behind the camera in films like “Die Slow 2”, “Cliffhanger” and “The Long Kiss Good Night”. Although Harlin did not have the same success in the new century as in the 1990s, he shares a Michael-Bay-like craziness that fits perfectly with the respective sensitivity of Chan and Knoxville and ensures that the characters are entertaining and worth seeing and worth seeing The explosions are common and excessive.
According to the outare material that Chans fans are used to in the credits of his films, a dedication is addressed to his long-time employee Chan Kwok-hungry, which drowned during the production of “Skiptrace”. As much as I liked the film, it is difficult for me to condemn the use of Greenscreens and CGI in some scenes. It is great to see that this film style is still being shot in a time at which the majority of the action we see is visualized in advance and mostly listed in a computer, but in the interest of everyone involved there is a good reason why this is no longer the norm.
“Skiptrace” will be released on October 25th on DVD and Blu-ray.
Follow Andrew Shearer on Twitter: twitter.com/abhcinema.
Comments are closed.