Review of Shanghai Knights (2003) by Clem666 — 09 Dec 2020

I really tried to enjoy this movie as it appears to be rated as the fourth best Jackie Chan movie according to user reviews. Yes the choreographies and fights in general are awesome thanks to this artist Jackie Chan is. Angles taken by the camera, environments and landscape scenes also are as gorgeous as the quality of the disguises. The historical links bring more depth (with the Chaplin and Conan Doyle thing). For once there is a strong woman in a movie like than, introducing Chon's sister capable to save for multiple times the protagonists' skins. Another good point is the music (excepted when the movie decides to serve us foolish scenes). The link between Chon and Roy is kinda laughable but still it's a cool bromance. About the jokes I admit I laugh at some of them (the more meta ones) but in overall they are dull.

And here we come to the main flaw of the movie (and it's sadder because it was the same in the first movie 'Shanghai Noon'): jokes are sooooo predictable, often (and barely always) racist or stereotypical, pre-pubescent and unfunny. The movie hardly rises above the level of the daisies both for the jokes and for the script. As I said, Chan makes all the work here and Roy (Owen Wilson) quickly becomes the shadow of himself. All he does in the whole movie is checking women, spitting gross and/or childish words and being greedy. He just appears to be a retarded perverted playboy, very symmetrical compared to the 1st movie (with the friend betrayal drinking part) and overacting. All the action scenes follow the same schema: 1) Roy is in danger for a reason or another and 2) Chon saves him brilliantly accompanied by some awkward fight sounds. Unless the Chon's sister I wrote about, all of the other females of the story are just objects (I'm just avoiding to use the term 'hoes'). The only romance of the story is awefully predictable and dumb.

This movie obviously had so much better to do but *sigh* it is just an even paler copy thant the first one.