Brief Story Line
Lao Luo (Jackie Chan - The Foreigner, The Lego Ninjago Movie etc) was an aging stunt man and having difficulties to get work. He had to rely on his beloved horse Red Hare to work on odd jobs but still owed people money and being chased around by debt collectors led by Dami (Andy On - As the Light Goes Out, Black Hat etc). Unfortunately Red Hare was the subject of ownership feud and Lao Luo had no choice but to seek the help from his estranged daughter Xiao Bao (Liu Haocun - Cliff Walkers, One Second etc) who in turn also asked her lawyer boyfriend Naihua (Kevin Guo - My Heroic Husband TV series etc).
As Lau Luo tried to make amends with his daughter, things got further complicated when a rich horse collector He Xin (Yu Rongguang - Shanghai Noon, Iron Monkey etc) also took an interest on Red Hare.
So how would the story conclude? You could find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
After seeing so many of Jackie Chan's movies, we have both been accustomed with his high risk action sequence where he used to do all his own stunts. As we see him getting older, those were reduced gradually which was quite noticeable in his movies in the past few years. This movie was no exception as there was no high stunt scenes but we still could see and enjoy the trademark fight sequence which always involved the use of various stuff lying around on location.
What really set this movie apart from his previous stories was the large amount of drama involved which frequently got emotional. We got to see Jackie Chan showing his maturity in acting as he was really convincing portraying the father of estranged daughter and his love for her and his horse whom he took care since it was born. Another big performer in the film was certainly the horse (sadly I did not catch its name when it was shown in the opening credit). It really could bring out the emotions of audience including myself and obviously my wife who could not stop herself from crying at scenes after scenes involving all of them. She could even feel sad just by looking at Jackie's facial expressions when he was feeling heartbroken.
Although there were so many emotional and touching moments, the film also had few humorous scenes where we could chuckled or smiled at the goofiness of the characters. Kevin Guo in particular was quite suitable as the city boy who had to face his girlfriend's unique father but still passionate enough in the court. The story telling was also very good to my personal opinion as the emotion build up was done very nicely up to that truly devastating scene. Even if the conclusion might be a bit predictable but it definitely made the ending felt worthwhile. Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also the support characters such as Xing Yu (Master Z: Ip Man Legacy etc) as one of Lau Luo's old friend and famous star Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior 2, The Wandering Earth etc) in minor role. Btw, Andy On to my surprise was playing a different type of character from the ones he used to do.
I read that the director and writer Larry Yang (director of award winning movie Mountain Cry, Adoring etc) is a big fan of Jackie Chan and wanted him to play in this movie but not until he revised the story a bit that Jackie agreed to do so. One thing that made the film felt quite realistic was the part about stunt performers with the adding of Jackie's actual past works shown in here. It made me realize how far I have been following him as I was able to recognize most of them. The scene where he was watching it with his daughter was also one of the most touching. Oh, in the closing credits you could also see few bloopers that was quite fun accompanied by a lovely song sung by Jackie himself.
For an action drama with comedy, this one felt a bit heavy on the drama but my wife and I did not think it as shortcoming but strength instead. The duration of 2 hours 6 minutes might seem long but we did not really feel it as we were too captivated by the story of how Lau Luo struggled to keep his horse, rekindle his relationship with his only daughter and trying to show that he was not finished yet as a stunt performer plus the intelligence of Red Hare. It was a truly great horse and its trainer should definitely be applauded for his brilliance in training it.
Overall this was definitely not the type of Jackie Chan's full action movie and people who are expecting such might not be satisfied. But if you would like to see him portraying someone who is quite close to his actual life, with some lovely drama of relationship between father daughter and a man & his horse, then there is plenty of it here. So if you want to see a heartwarming family drama movie featuring Jackie Chan, then this would be to your liking.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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