Written by: David Marconi (screenplay by), Stephen Leather (based on the novel "The Chinaman")
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Leung, Rufus Jones
Rated: R
Plot
A humble businessman with a past seeks justice when his daughter is killed in an act of terrorism, resulting in a cat-and-mouse game with an government official whose past holds clues to the killers' identities.
Verdict
This is better than I thought. It's more than a Taken knock-off, but it still has more than a few faults. It's two movies combined, Taken shoehorned into a story about a former terrorist. The problem is that the two stories aren't linked. This could have been better with a few tweaks to the plot.
I have to wonder if someone decided the Pierce Brosnan story didn't have enough excitement and they did they best they could to find a spot for Jackie Chan. This movie could have been pretty good.
It depends.
Review
The first scene is a setup the movie doesn't earn. It's trying to provide the foundation for an emotional impact, but it doesn't develop the father daughter relationship. We're supposed to care just because they're related and that doesn't work. We see Jackie Chan trying to search through the rubble after a bomb blast, looking for his daughter. This is the catalyst for Jackie Chan's crusade against Pierce Brosnan's character Liam. Since Liam used to be in the IRA, he must know who planted the bomb even though a new IRA group is claiming credit. I don't understand the reasoning at all.
This is a strange movie because it's part political thriller with the IRA having a division in the ranks and then Jackie Chan trying to get vengeance on a guy he thinks knows the bombers that killed his daughter. I assumed this was Chan's version of Taken, but it isn't. He's basically a side story just to drum up drama. He doesn't seem to fit in this movie. By combining the stories, neither gets enough time to develop, but it thankfully stops this from being a Taken rip off.
While Liam claims to know nothing, he does know more than we thought. He just doesn't know anything about the bombing. He's trying to figure that out too while dealing with the thorn in his side, Chan. If Liam somehow used Chan, weaponized him to find answers, that would link these plots. The movie could make Liam more evil. He could completely use and abuse Chan for his own motives while pretending to help Chan. This needed something.
Chan finds the bombers and takes them out. One of them still alive is treated rough by the cops. I get it, that's a terrorist, but that could be a line the movie takes, how morality wavers when faced with extreme circumstances. You could take the perspective of a cop on the ground, Chan, and Liam or make a terrorist sympathetic or at least conflicted. Chan is acting like a terrorist himself in his pursuit of vengeance. The movie doesn't try to do any of this, and that's to its detriment. Maybe the intention is to compare Liam and Chan, linked through the terror they created, but that connection just isn't made.
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