When a Jackie Chan's movie trailer was shown 2 or 3 weeks ago in the theaters, I immediately told my wife about it. And since we were both fans of his works, we would love to watch his movie, whatever the story/topic about. Originally we wanted to see this movie on Thursday at Setiabudi, however it did not have the 7PM show there as it was still sharing the studios with other movies. But on Friday, it had a 6.30 PM show so we were able to buy tickets for that time. Ok, let's move on to the story now.
Brief Story Line
In 1941 when China was still under the Japanese colonialism, there was a group of railroad porters led by Ma Yuan (Jackie Chan - star of so many action comedy movies) that included Da Hai the tailor (played by the singer former EXO member Huang Zi Tao) and Ru Yi, the porter who love to use small hammer in his act (Jaycee Chan - The Twins Effect 2, The Invisible Target etc). This so called gang specialized in robbing trains passing the railroads of China. However, they were not the normal robbers who targeted the passengers but instead they focused on robbing the Japanese soldiers' weapons and uniforms. Their trademark was always putting a cartoonish picture of tiger on the body of the Japanese soldiers.
One day after a robbery on a train, the Japanese captain (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi - A Sower of Seeds 3) was called upon to investigate the repeated robberies. He actually suspected Ma Yuan, but could not prove his suspicion. Later that night, when Ma Yuan and his daughter, together with Da Hai went to Da Hai's mother's home (played by Fan Xu), a Chinese soldier from Eight's platoon went over the wall to the house. Feeling obligated to help, they decided to hid him while the Japanese soldiers (led again by the captain) went through the house, but unable to find the soldier.
Apparently this soldier was on a mission to try and blow up the railroad bridge but his whole platoon was not successful and he was the only one who survived, but was injured during his escape. Ma Yuan wanted to find out more but the soldier did not allow him. Later on though, Ma Yuan had no choice but to continue this mission. He felt that this was the time to do something big, rather than just doing smaller stuff like robbing soldiers. Since he did not have any knowledge of blowing things, he asked the information from Fan Chuan (Wang Kai - Nirvana In Fire TV series) a supposed sharpshooter who previously worked for a warlord but now was the owner of a noodle restaurant. However, Fan Chuan never admitted this fact and he did not respond to Ma Yuan's question, leaving Ma Yuan with no choice but to try himself.
After gathering info on where to find the explosives, Ma Yuan, Da Hai, Ru Yi, Da Qui the biggest and strongest porter (Sang Ping) and Xiao Qi who loved to curse "Shoot" (Alan Ng) went to the Japanese explosives and weapons warehouse. They would try their best using their physical agility and ability to try acquire the explosives, with the help of distraction from another friend of theirs and through the Japanese guards circling around.
So could Ma Yuan and team acquire those explosives? Could they continue with their biggest "mission" ever to blow the bridge and contribute to their country? And could they survive the chase by the Japanese soldiers? Find all the goofy adventures of Ma Yuan and his friends in this fun movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well I was a little bit skeptical when I watched the trailer of the movie, as I thought that the film looked a bit low budget and no familiar faces at all, apart from Jackie Chan (perhaps lack of watching newer Chinese movies contributed to this. LOL). But when I watched the movie, my wife and I were entertained by the funny action scenes, especially during the "heist" of the explosives on the warehouse. Other than those, there were also some funny moments in the movie including some funny remarks/comments between Jackie Chan and his son Jaycee.
However, honestly without Jackie Chan in this movie, it is hard to picture the movie to be any good or stand a chance of commercial success. We were unable to root for the other characters who were supposed to be the main persons together with Jackie, but instead it become like Jackie is the one lifting the whole team. The only characters that were actually had any significance (at least had a good onscreen memorable performance) was the Japanese captain, and also Fan Chuan's character. Furthermore, Jackie Chan did not show off a lot of his trademark moves too much in this movie. It is understandable though seeing that he is now > 60 years old (which was considerably amazing for a person of that age).
Some of the fight scenes with the Japanese soldiers were brief but brutal (resulted to the death of the soldiers), but other scenes were quite comical and the soldiers were left alive. Good thing that those very brutal scenes were so brief that most likely children would not realize it, as there were some of them in the audience watching the movie yesterday.
As an overall, the movie did provide us some good laughs and some cool acrobatic fight scenes, but it lacked the incredible stunts of a Jackie Chan movie. And you should beware that the special effects were not that great due to the CGI used at the last major fight/war scenes before the end, which was not spectacular. Nevertheless, if you are a hardcore fan of Jackie Chan, it is still an entertaining movie, though not as amazing as his other prior movies. If you are not a fan though, I am a bit doubtful whether you can enjoy this as we did. Oooh btw, there was a surprise cameo appearance before the end of the movie by a very famous Hong Kong star. Despite this movie not directed by Jackie Chan (it's directed by Ding Sheng - Saving Mr. Wu, Police Story: Lockdown, Little Big Soldier etc), there was still some bloopers during the end credit which was quite entertaining and definitely worth to see.
If you are looking for some nice fun adventure movie with Jackie Chan in it, then this one definitely can be a choice for you to see before the 2016 year ends. But if you are expecting the usual kickass Jackie Chan movie with his crazy stunts, then this might not be your favorite. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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