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Hoo boy, this was one bad movie. The best stuff—mesmerizing
assembly line porn at a water-bottling facility—happens under
the opening credits, and even that is jacked up by having
the camera too close to allow us to appreciate the panorama.
The Giorgio Armani tux, however, gets four stars.
In this outing, Chan stars as cab driver Jimmy Tong,
who is recruited to be the chauffeur for ultra-smooth billionaire
Clark Devlin (Isaacs) by the smirky, mysterious Steena
(Mazar). Turns out, though, that Devlin is just a regular
guy, and he and Jimmy bond quickly. Turns out also, that Devlin
isn’t such a regular guy after all. In fact, he’s a CSA (don’t
ask) agent, whose investigation of shady bottled-water magnate
Diedrich Banning (Coster) is about to pay off. When
Devlin is critically injured in an accident Banning arranges,
Jimmy dons the crime-fighting tuxedo and his identity. Meanwhile,
the CSA chief (an uncredited Bob Balaban), gives young
eager beaver Del Blaine (Hewitt) her first field assignment,
as “Devlin’s” partner. Together these inexperienced spies
learn that Devlin plans to poison the world’s fresh water
supplies to guarantee a steady base of customers for his bottled
water.
The movie proceeds by the numbers. There’s the required throwaway
tough-guy line. There’s a nutty-freaky mad scientist (Stormare,
slightly toning down his fucked-up doc from Minority Report)
who’s water-contamination plan suggests a Star Trek episode.
There’s a bored, urbane smart ass as the bad guy. There’s
also Mr. James Brown, The Godfather Of Soul. Okay,
so I didn’t see that coming. Once again we get Toronto, standing
in for Any City, U.S.A., and the usual multi-culti society
of Chan’s Western movies. The women come off best in this
movie. Hewitt is game, and Mazar is her usual bad self. And
it was kind of nice to see that even a bad guy can have some
employees who are typical slacking layabouts who haven’t bought
in to the world domination plan.
But the raison d’etre of any Chan flick is the series of
(frequently comic) action adventures before nabbing the bad
guy. Well these adventures, oy. Chan’s strengths and his likeability
are wasted here, and that’s a crime. Chan shines as the underdog
whose special skills and agility enable him to get the best
of wicked or vain adversaries. Here, he’s just a guy wearing
a tricked-out suit Batman would give his left nut for. The
action, for the most part, is terrible, just terrible. Cartoonish
wire work and cheesy stunts will have Chan fans wringing their
hands and writhing in their seats. Chan’s stock in trade is
the character who’s a bit of a rube, but who amazes as the
essence of smooth when it comes down to the action. Most of
the fight sequences here are just too silly. They are also
clunkily edited, employing multiple cuts instead of staying
on Jackie so you can be amazed. Chan’s skills are a thespian
aren’t what put asses in seats. The fights, people. It’s all
about the fights. Louse up the fights and all you’ve got is
80-odd minutes of exposed film.
Better you should watch Rush Hour again, if you need
Chan without subtitles.
—Roxanne Bogucka
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out
of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
