SkiptraceDirector – Renny HarlinCast – Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Fan BingbingRating – 0.5/5
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Watching Skiptrace is a depressing experience – and not just because it's terrible.
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The thing about Skiptrace is that it knows exactly how terrible it is. There is not a single frame in this film that seems to be put together competently. Watching it feels like you're getting a roundhouse kick in the face from Jackie Chan, while Johnny Knoxville acts like it's Jackass days again and sticks bloodthirsty leeches to your bare eyeballs.
Everyone involved in this film needs to spend a good hour in silence and think about what they have done. Everyone – Jackie Chan, director Renny Harlin, even Johnny Knoxville – needs to gleefully stare that fat paycheck in the face, accept all those zeros and sit in their mansions and repent.
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The look on her face is priceless and perfect for this film.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let's talk about the lazy retread of older (and better) Jackie Chan films that is Skiptrace. Honestly, they throw everything at you. It doesn't matter if you're an obsessive Jackie Chan fan or someone who laughs at his antics every now and then, in Skiptrace you can either get the most out of Jackie Chan or not at all. It's the equivalent of a Salman Khan film where all Bhai is asked to do is get in and out. Here's Jackie Chan at his best, hitting the same old beats as always and tricking himself into thinking he's giving his fans exactly what they want.
{{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} Spoiler alert: It didn't fall over.
He plays the imaginatively named detective Bennie Chan, which is just the first of this film's many little details that suggest his shrugging attitude toward plot, character, and action. Detective Chan is on the trail of a gangster named Matador – and has been for TEN years! The key to finding him is to transport a cackling American con man named Connor, played by Johnny Knoxville, from Siberia across the Gobi Desert to China – because, reasons…
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Hilarity, believe me, will not ensue.
Jackie Chan is a legend, and even Johnny Knoxville had his moments (he was so good in Kim Jee-woon's The Last Stand, playing Arnie's crazy sidekick). But perhaps no one missed the point more tragically than Renny Harlin, who made at least two films in his career that are still remembered today – Die Hard 2 and The Long Kiss Good Night. Obviously this isn't the '90s, so Renny Harlin is pretty much a schlockmeister now, but still. Believe it or not, it's a step down from his last disaster, the epically terrible The Legend of Hercules.
You get the drift, right? Both Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville spend most of the film doing this. {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}}
Here he doesn't understand what makes Hong Kong action cinema so entertaining. Skiptrace sits in the uncomfortable no-man's land between the West and the East, and in an effort to please both audiences, it only succeeds in alienating them. When you watch Keanu Reeves' John Wick and see that it's glorious gun-fu, you realize what a tragedy Skiptrace is. Not only does Harlin film and edit the fist fights with the frenzy of a meth addict, he also does it in the bleakest way possible. He sets up about four or five cameras, points them at Jackie Chan and shouts “Action.” The lack of vision is incredible.
In fact, it seems so pointless to go into such detail about this film's flaws. It has no respect for its audience. So why should we waste more time talking about it?
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So unless you've ever wondered what it would be like to see Jackie Chan dance to a Mongolian tribe's cover of Adele's “Rolling in the Deep,” you don't have to endure Skiptrace. Or if you're Chris Tucker. Chris Tucker probably needs to sue someone.
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