SKIPTRACE
DIRECTOR: Renny Harlin
CAST: Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Fan Bingbing, Eric Tsang, Eve Torres, Winston Chao, Youn Junghoon, Michael Wong
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12 PG V
RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
JUSTIN LOWE
More in the vein of Chan’s Hollywood buddy movies like Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon than the classic 1980s kung fu comedy genre that he helped originate, Skiptrace finds the still-limber Hong Kong superstar settling into a more sedate format.
In their first collaboration, Chan and Finnish action director Renny Harlin scored an impressive $60 million (R800m) China debut weekend in July. As the US-China co-production opens, it’s nine years after Hong Kong police inspector Bennie Chan’s (Chan) partner Yung Bai (Tsang) died at the hands of a Chinese crime syndicate.
Chan still blames himself and is chasing the underworld figure known as The Matador, whom he blames for the murder. Suspecting that his target is corrupt businessman Victor Wong (Chao), Chan launches an assault on his drug-smuggling operation, only to fail.
Captain Tang (Wong) orders Chan to take a month off while things cool down, but Bennie gets called back into action almost immediately by his goddaughter, Yung’s orphaned only child Samantha (Bingbing). A guest-services liaison for high rollers at a Macau casino, she’s been duped by gambler Conor Watts (Knoxville), who’s disappeared with a sizeable share of the company’s assets. Chan discovers the American has been kidnapped and airlifted back to Russia, where he has unfinished business with the unmarried, pregnant daughter of a local gangster.
Chan’s only chance of bringing the gambler to justice is to single-handedly take on the Russian goons and extract Watts. With their passports destroyed, Chan begins hauling his prisoner back to Hong Kong, first crossing Russia by train, then traversing Mongolia by tractor and horseback. Their journey reveals that following a murder, Watts may have inadvertently obtained evidence that could incriminate Wong and reveal the identity of The Matador.
Action vet Harlan (Die Hard 2, The Legend of Hercules) knows a thing or two about fight scenes, and while humour may not be his forté, with comedic actors like Chan and Knoxville, all bases are covered. Chan performs all of his own fights and quite a few of the action scenes.
Knoxville thrashes about in a fairly undisciplined manner, but provides a sizeable share of comic relief. Fan performs almost as many stunts as Knoxville, but her underdeveloped character doesn’t amount to much more than an ultimately ironic plot device.
With energetic action and comedy set-pieces staged across Russia, Mongolia and China, the film’s ambitions sometimes outstrip the resilience of Jay Longino and Ben David Grabinski’s largely derivative script, but in the end, it’s hard to top Chan soloing on Adele’s Rolling in the Deep accompanied on traditional instruments by a village of yurt-dwelling Mongolian herders. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon, you will like this.