It may not surprise you to learn that the parts for this script are mass-produced. Chan plays a veteran Hong Kong police officer named Bennie Chan (named after a common co-star of Jackie's) who looks after his goddaughter Samantha (Fan Bingbing), the daughter of his late police partner, while simultaneously pursuing a faceless crime boss named The Matador. Johnny Knoxville is Connor, a self-confessed arrogant American and con man who is introduced in a sloppy flashback as someone wanted by the Chinese crime syndicate for witnessing a murder by people who also put Samantha in danger, and all that at the same Hong Kong casino that Connor is accused of ripping off. Instead, the Russian mob gets Connor for impregnating a gangster's daughter. The Chinese crime syndicate, some evil Russians and the Hong Kong police want Connor, so Bennie steals him from the Russians and tries to bring him back.
Even though the script leans toward cuteness and never offers strong villains, it develops a reliable cleverness with its tropes (it zigzags with a familiar scenario and then zigzags at the last second) and creates vivid contrasts between the accidental partners . Bennie is all about honor; Connor is a snake. In brief heart-to-heart conversations that worked for me, they agreed that they are very lonely men. They are like the contrasting elements of city and country, past and present, as Bennie and Connor travel through various rural locations and indirectly view Chinese traditions such as the Monihei Mud Festival. A cherry on top of this rather clever script by BenDavid Grabinski and Jay Longino is that the evidence they need is on a broken cell phone that can't be charged in rural areas without electricity.
Once their journey begins with Chan pushing a handcuffed, limping Knoxville through a matryoshka factory while fighting bad guys, Skiptrace becomes compulsive viewing. The energy barely lets up as the scenes change every five minutes and Chan and Co. feature multiple climbing frames. And there's always a spark as the upper hand switches between the quick Bennie and the snaky Connor as the two exchange underlining grins. Chan's charisma is a no-brainer for that kind of elasticity, but Knoxville is a lively match. He's always had an open demeanor about him, whether he was greeting us on MTV's “Jackass” or boasting a big, infectious laugh on the show, and he fits the slightly slapstick tone of “Skiptrace” perfectly.
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