Sunday, July 31, 2016

SKIPTRACE - Jackie Chan's Latest Buddy Cop Comedy

As I indicated in my earlier post, I was having a rather wild movie marathon with 3 films in a day with my wife. What I am about to write would be the second movie of the day. We almost could not make it to this one due to so many people flocking to the cinemas to watch movies, making the queue very long. I guess with 5 new movies since last week to this week, there were so many options for people to watch any kind of movie they want. Anyway, with less than 5 minutes to the start of the movie, we finally managed to buy the tickets for this one which started at 5.05 PM.

Brief Story Line

Movie began with the scene of police detective Bennie Chan (Jackie Chan - no introduction required) unable to help his partner Yung who was strapped to a bomb with less than a minute before detonation. He was able to pass his watch to Bennie and asked him to take care of his daughter Samantha before throwing himself to the water where the bomb exploded. Feeling devastated, Bennie continued to try capturing "Matador" the villain responsible for his partner's death for the next 9 years. He suspected that Matador was actually a powerful and very rich person, Victor Wong (Winston Chao - The Wedding Banquet). With the assistance of 2 more junior detectives, Bennie were trying to capture Matador's right hand man, Handsome Willie (Korean star Yeon Jung-Hoon). The operation went haywire and Bennie was instructed by his captain Tang (Hong Kong star Michael Wong) to take personal leave for 1 month.

Scene moved to somewhere in Russia where Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville - Jackass, Walking Tall etc) was being tortured by Dasha (Eve Torres - WWE wrestler) the bodyguard of a Russian mob who was forcing Connor to marry his pregnant daughter Natalya. The movie has a little bit of flashback to tell us why Connor was in this situation.

We were shown that Connor was a conman who went to Macau for doing some gambling. He won quite a lot of money by cheating and met with Samantha (Fan Bingbing - X-Men: Days of Future Past) a lady working in the casino and her boss was none other than Willie. Connor who was being chased by the Russian mob, accidentally went to the hotel penthouse where he witnessed the killing of a girl. Willie was very mad at Samantha since Connor was able to go to penthouse using Samantha's access card and also for cheating casino's money. Willie told his men to locate Connor dead or alive. Feeling threatened, Samantha who was now the God-daughter of Bennie went for his help. So Bennie asked Samantha to stay in Hong Kong while he tried to locate Connor who was already caught in Russia.

Bennie had no choice but to rescue Connor from the Russian mob. They had to fight the Russian mob, led by Dasha through the streets of Russia. Finally they managed to escape from them. Bennie's intention from beginning has always been to bring Connor back to Macau so Samantha can be saved. While Bennie tried to avoid it as he knew he would not come out alive as he was the witness to the killing. With 2 different mindsets, naturally both of them drove each other crazy. However, they had no choice but to use their wits and strengths to avoid being captured by the Russian mobs as well as Willie's thugs.

So can Connor escape from Bennie and run away? Or will Bennie be able to bring him back to Macau? Can both of them reach their intended location safely? Will Bennie be able to finally avenge his partner's death? Find them all in this hilarious fun movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Both my wife and I had a decent amount of laughs watching this movie. It was a typical Jackie Chan's movie with lots of slapstick humor and crazy stunts. It was actually kind of refreshing to see Jackie Chan still able to do his own stunts (though some of them were not as crazy as his earlier movies, which is understood due to his age). The fighting scenes were still classic Jackie Chan style of using whatever things in front of him. Johnny Knoxville seemed to be a match with Jackie as well. It was funny looking at him being the object of fun, especially during the scene where he was being rescued by Jackie.

There were also various hilarious moments in Mongolia when Connor and Bennie were driving the vehicle, and also in Gobi desserts where they were captured by the Gobi tribe. And of course there were still plenty of action and also some surprising twists in the end.

My most memorable moment were during the time Connor & Bennie had to sing to have the road opened for them and also the scene in the cave.

For those who would like to see Jackie Chan's actions and fun style, this movie is definitely suitable. Forget about the absurdity of the story, this is purely fun movie and there will be no need to think why not this or that. If you want to have a good laugh watching a movie, then this one would be just nice. There were also the usual gag reel and the accidents Jackie had during filming in the end credit scene which was actually a classic Jackie Chan's trademark even though this movie was not directed by him, but by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea, etc).

Mike's Movie Moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars 

2 comments:

  1. Jackie chan is one of my favorite actors/directors of all time.

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    1. Yes, could not agree more. He is one of the greatest actor/director China ever produced in so many years..

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