Possibly the least interesting Jackie Chan film I've seen. Yes he's made some stinkers but this is the first time I was largely bored.
Cobbled together from any number of better techno thrillers, this film has a bunch of bad guys lead by a ghostly former government assassin trying to run a couple of robberies in order to get the required tech and passwords to still billions in cryto. When the police find that their systems are compromised they bring in a retired "hunter" to bring the crooks down the old fashion way.
This film is a mess. From a script that doesn't explain anything either at all or well, to action sequences that make no sense (the 20 minute opening sequence has the bad guys peeling off disguise after disguise after disguise despite having nothing under the clothes they were just wearing), to long periods where nothing happens (The training in the streets sequence), this is a film that cries out for a new editor who is willing to remove stuff. One that can actually match up the action in a sequence so it actually flows and doesn't have to be helped along by our imagination and letting things slide.
Yes, Chan is fine, but he isn't given much to do until late in the game (hell, he doesn't come into the film until almost the laf hour mark). The rest of the cast is equally good but they to are not given anything to do. We don't know who anyone is so early sequences fall flat, and we aren't clued in until almost a hour in when we start to get long monologs that fill us in. That would be okay, except it's so late we don't care.
The film also isn't focused. is it about the cops at the start? The bad guys? Chan? the daughter of Chan's dead partner? What is everyone's relationship? The film doesn't know and doesn't do anything until it needs to pull something out of its bottom to drive things forward again.
This isn't bad as such, but it isn't anything we haven't seen before (EYE IN THE SKY any one? MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? How about any other recent techno thriller with a hacker who can get into anything? How about any film where a young cop is trying to make their dead parent proud while watched over a misunderstood ex-partner?)
I was bored and kept reaching for the remote.
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