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Jackie Chan is perhaps the world’s most famous entertainer.
It is a shame that most people in America will never know
the origin of the star’s fame and popularity. Jackie Chan’s
American movies have been somewhat of a mixed bag. The Rush
Hour or Shanghai Noon series were amusing, but
Jackie was relegated to the role of the kung fu punching straight
man while his “sidekick” mugged for the camera. Jackie is
getting old and is no longer capable of achieving the same
level of intensity in his physical performances, but he is
such a performer that a reality TV show following him to the
grocery store would be far more entertaining than most movies
made today. During the course of his film career Jackie has
been dropped out of a helicopter, hit by a car, and had his
nose broken more times than one can remember. One can practically
see him screaming at us from the gladiatorial arena “Are you
not entertained?” Unfortunately as far as his latest work
is concerned we aren’t.
The Medallion is a mess of a movie. The story is simple
enough. Jackie Chan is a Hong Kong detective who is imbued
with magic powers after contact with the eponymous medallion.
Of course the crazy supervillian Snakehead (Sands)
wants the magic powers for himself and so it is up to Jackie
Chan and Interpol agents Watson (Evans) and Nicole
(Forlani) to bring him down. To fill the running time
the movie is full contrived humorous situations and
that enemy of modern filmmaking, music videos. The pacing
is horribly uneven featuring lightweight humor and awkward
heavy moments within minutes of each other. Even the quality
of filmmaking is inconsistent. The camera is often held at
45-degree angles and occasionally it appears they cut corners
by using a cheaper brand of film. Worst of all, the constantly
playing background music is terrible. When Claire Forlani’s
character is introduced it sounded like porno music, leading
one to expect “action” of an entirely different sort. Overall
the entire movie comes off feeling cheap and unfinished.
The fights are few and far between and when they do occur
they are of the most unimaginative variety. The director,
Gordon Chan, also directed Fist Of Legend and
Sammo Hung choreographed the fight scenes so it was
not unreasonable to expect a whole lot more. The concept of
this movie is flawed. Jackie Chan doesn’t need any super powers
or special effects to kick ass. He just needs good directing
and worthy adversaries. The original title was Highbinders,
which would lead one to hope that this was a decent film before
some money-grubbing Hollywood goon came in and altered it
during post-production. That’s a pleasant fantasy, but odds
are this was just a shitty movie from start to finish. It
is good to see Jackie and his pals from Hong Kong getting
work, but let’s hope their next project is one more worthy
of their talents, and someone should tell Anthony Wong
to work on his English.
—Woodrow Bogucki
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out of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
