Review of The Foreigner (2017) by Kaptenvideo — 28 Dec 2017

A humble businessman (Jackie Chan) seeks justice when his daughter is killed in an act of terrorism. A conflict ensues with a government official (Pierce Brosnan) whose past may hold clues to the killers' identities.

What would you like to see less: yet another spy / government / secret ops action or yet another action movie which has a geriatric leading man because they don’t want to retire just because of the old age.

Well, in this case, you get both. But „The Foreigner“ has a secret weapon – Jackie Chan. Yes, he’s 63 now but Asians age well and he can still kick it, seemingly effortlessly.

It’s not mostly just clever editing, body doubles and special effects too, Chan’s proud to be able to do the physical stuff himself, just like he has always done.

The amount of ass-kicking has dried out a bit – the first fight only occurs about 45 minutes into the near two hour movie – but you’re still gonna have fun watching Chan doing the brawl.

For variety’s sake, there’s also a hefty amount of explosions, shooting, and political intrigue, because you can’t have shady government thriller without it.

Ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan as the nemesis is not bad either although he sounds like a lecturing schoolteacher most of the time, which makes the result feel cheesier than it has to.

But this is still a Jackie Chan movie, so some cheese factor is expected, starting with the fact that most of the events wander somewhere in the nowhereland between believable and ridonculous.

Then again, the dialogue and the motivation of characters stay on the serious side, which compensates for some of leap of faith the viewer has to take to enjoy all this. This is a not often seen kind of action movie where the dialogue sounds actually pretty good too.

Much is happening, too, even considering the 114 minute length which honestly seems too long for this kind of entertainment.

There are political and personal intrigues, a bunch of secondary characters doing something or other, surprises and even a bizarre but cool Rambo style section in the woods.

Oh, and the rumors about Chan showing his acting skills here are true. Despite the importance of kicking ass, this is a rather complex role dealing with irreparable loss, regrets and getting old.

I recall that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest screen role could be summarized with the very same words, but his performance isn’t half this moving, and the movie („Aftermath“, 2017) kind turned out to be a stinker as well. Sorry, Ahnuld!

Ultimately, I rather enjoyed my time with Jackie Chan who does not try to conquer the West anymore and thus rarely appears in our cinemas.

„The Foreigner“ will not leave a burning and lasting impression but there’s lot to like about it, even if it would benefit from being 20 minutes shorter. There’s so much going on that some of it will feel a big half-baked retrospectively. Or maybe there's just too little of Jackie Chan for a Jackie Chan movie.

By the way, the director Martin Campbell was the first to offer us Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in 1995 („Goldeneye“), plus „Casino Royale“ which is my favorite 007 movie of all time.

He did the two Zorros with Antonio Banderas as well – not to mention 2010’s „Edge of Darkness“ which didn’t turn out to be much of a comeback for Mel Gibson after all.