When my wife got an invitation to the special screening of this new Jackie Chan movie, I was really excited and immediately told her to accept it (not that she needed any encouragement anyway as she is a really big fan of Jackie Chan). So off we went to the screening at Senayan City where the movie started at 7.20 PM after brief opening remarks and prize distribution from sponsor. And now let us get on with the film.
Brief Story Line
Tang Huating (Jackie Chan - The Foreigner, Bleeding Steel etc) was the leader of a private security consultant based in London with a large team of former military and experts in security. When one of their VIP client was being targeted by a group of deadly assassins, two of Tang's team members who happened to be nearby the area, Lei Zhenyu (Yang Yang - Once Upon a Time, Martial Universe series etc) and Zhang Kaixuan (Ai Lun - Hello Mr. Billionaire etc) were called to rescue, with the aid from another member Miya (Miya Muqi - Kungfu Yoga etc).
However, the threat did not stop there as the assassins were also after the client's daughter Fareeda (Xu Ruo Han). With the danger threatening the life of the client's family, Tang and his elite members of Vanguard had to work relentlessly to fulfill their task of making sure their client was safe.
And how would the story conclude? Find them all in this full action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I actually saw the trailer to this movie once before and I noticed that it seemed to be full action. And apparently the film did deliver in terms of action. It was quite nonstop from the early part till the grand extreme finale. For almost the entire film, audience were shown a lot of crazy stunts and action sequence that included awesome hand to hand fight scenes, gun fights, bombs explosion and many more. There was an amazing sequence of jet ski chase in the water which was very dangerous and there was an actual incident where Jackie Chan nearly drowned.
The movie was going in a rather quick pace with little room to really get to know the characters but to me it felt quite sufficient. The cast did their job admirably, especially in the action area. Jackie Chan though, did not show as much fight scenes as he used to (which was understandable considering his age) and there was even a hilarious scene towards the end with reference to his capacity to do crazy stunt. In here the main stars were definitely Yang Yang with his good looks and great action skills, Ai Lun as his more mature and a bit of joker partner plus Miya who was fantastic in the fights and car chase scenes (my wife really admired her in one of the scene in London) and Xu Ruo Han who provided a bit of colour as the client's daughter.
The movie's sound effects were absolutely fantastic. Even when we saw this in a theater with a standard sound system, the sounds were greatly felt towards the studio especially during the car chase and the gun fights plus explosions. And those effects really did provide us the best experience while watching an action movie. With a Dolby Atmos sound effect from the movie itself, I could only imagine how it would sound if we saw this in a studio with such system. Btw, this was a film made for Chinese New Year so it was no surprise to see CNY themes in here.
This movie was directed by Stanley Tong who had amazingly cooperated with Jackie Chan in 5 other movies including that famous Rumble in the Bronx (which made a name for both Stanley and Jackie in the west), plus other successful hits like Police Story 3: Supercop and The Myth. I thought Stanley Tong got the chance to show off once again his expertise in directing action movie (and no doubt provided a huge budget which certainly helped). And like in any other Jackie Chan's movies, this one also got some bloopers and few background scenes during the end credit which was accompanied by a lovely song sung by Jackie himself (my wife loved it so much that she immediately looked it up in the internet and that song has been played many times since then). There was however no post end credit scene.
Overall this was one heck of an entertaining action movie. OK some of them might be a bit extreme, but other action films also did that to some degree. Story wise might be very standard and as I said above not a lot of room for character development which might be critical for some audience but for me and my wife were not really that important in an action film like this. With some over the top and crazy stunts plus high quality fight scenes, brief comedic moments but very little drama, I was really satisfied with the movie due to its intensity. I honestly thought it was better than few previous Jackie Chan movies. I would definitely recommend action fans to see this film once it hits the theater on Chinese New Year holiday and hopefully you would enjoy it as much as we did.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Special thanks from us to Leo, Senayan City and Cinema XXI for the invitation to this event. We really appreciate it and look forward to future events.
Below are some pictures from the event:
Cant find out stateside release date. Trailers look exciting
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