In a bold reversal from Rush Hour, the film pairs Chan with a laid-back, touchy-feely white guy instead of a hyperactive, foul-mouthed black guy, and it makes him a fish-out-of-water in the Old West instead of modern-day Los Angeles, although once again he's trying to rescue a kidnapped woman. It wants so very badly to be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (one of the many scenes that you think is the final scene is a direct copy of the last scene of Butch Cassidy, except -- and I don't think I'm giving anything away here, considering it's a comedy -- the camera keeps rolling and they don't die), but Chan is no Newman and Owen Wilson is no Redford (or maybe it's supposed to be the other way around).
Wilson's character, Roy, is pretty much Dignan, his character from Bottle Rocket. He's glaringly anachronistic, spouting Iron John lines to his tough cowboy compadres just before they rob a train: "Are you nervous? It's okay to be nervous. I'll keep an eye on you." But his character grows on you, mainly because he's the only one with any funny lines who actually manages to make them funny. The rest of the film's so-called comedy is so stale you could hammer a nail with it -- and that's just what the movie does: hammer you over the head with it. Exhibit A: the "joke" shown in the trailer, where Chan announces his name, Chon Wang, and Dignan drawls, "Chon Wang? That's a terrible cowboy name!" No, that's a terrible joke. In fact, most of the jokes seem to have started as punchlines, with the set-ups being crudely and pointlessly shoehorned to fit. (Crude being the operative word; the humor is strictly lowest common denominator.) Everything about the movie is as two-dimensional and functionlessly decorative as the second story of an Old West storefront. To say that the villain is the love child of Fu Manchu and Snidely Whiplash is to describe his entire psychological profile. I've seen more nuanced and in-depth characterizations in a Lucky Luke cartoon.
And don't even get me started on the bar fight set to ZZ Top's "La Grange."
Al Gore will hate this movie, because the climactic scene is a shoot-out in a church (a blatant rip-off of John Woo). (For those of you who don't check Al Gore's website regularly, one of his recent proposals is to ban guns in church.) The church is also the site of the only good fighting in the movie, when the emphasis is on Chan's skills, not goofy props, and he battles opponents who actually seem to be fighting back, unlike the earlier fights when his enemies obligingly stand still until Chan can smack them.
I won't deny laughing from time to time -- though the outtakes at the end are funnier than anything in the actual movie -- but on the whole, Shanghai Noon is lame-ass when it should be whup-ass. (Wow. I don't think I've used the word "ass" so much in a review of any movie not starring Rupert Everett.)
Okay, now I have three rants.
INDIGNANT WHITE-LIBERAL-GUILT RANT: As some background on this rant, let me say that I took a class in college in which we watched a bunch of movies and critiqued the portrayal of Native Americans in them, and as my crazy friend Julie liked to say, I took the class way too seriously. Shanghai Noon is a throwback to the John Ford movies, and I don't mean that in a good way. First of all, Chan starts walking from somewhere in Nevada, heading for Carson City, NV. Yet he stumbles across Crow and Lakota Indians, which means he either overshot Carson City by some 1,000 miles, an impressive accomplishment in just two days (especially considering he had to cross an entire mountain range) with no food or water; or he wandered into the lush, forested South Dakota district of Nevada; or the filmmakers didn't give a shit for cultural or historical accuracy and slapped Crow and Lakota clothes and designs on generic "Indians" because that's the stereotypical image of "Indians." They've got the Lakota saying "How" and throwing tomahawks, neither of which any Indian tribe ever did. It's strongly implied that their "peace pipe" is stuffed with pot. Chan arrives at their camp, gets stoned, and wakes up in the morning married to the chief's daughter. Yeah, that's how it works. I'm probably more sensitive to this than most of you, but I found it incredibly offensive.
AUDIENCE RANT: That would be the couple in front of me. The guy was wearing what appeared to be a silver swim cap that reflected distractingly throughout the movie. Though his girlfriend seemed to negotiate the aisles with no problem, she must have been blind, because her kind boyfriend felt compelled to narrate the action on screen: "Now the horse is drinking the bottle! The horse is gonna get drunk!"
METRO RANT: As I was passing through the turnstiles in the Pentagon City metro station on my way home, I heard a loud "bang!" behind me that sounded one hell of a lot like a gunshot. So you can imagine how reassured and cozy-safe I felt to see the crack Metro security guard shoot a bored glance in the vague direction of the sound and then go back to chatting with her friends.
Back to
homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search