It’s meant to be more of a comedy, but it lacks the heart and joy of his earlier projects, and the action isn’t anything to write home about. Why they had Jackie literally BEATING us over the head with history and “you know the treasure belongs to the world!” stuff is beyond me. Even with Stanley Tong writing, it came across as stilted and a little insulting at times. The fights are fairly uninspired, and besides Jackie Showing off his moves better than he has for quite some time, but it can’t overcome the REALLY bad script writing. I have to admit, I WANTED to like Kung Fu Yoga more than I did, but I can’t lie to myself. We open the film with a cheesy CGI 300 style battle where Jackie firsts starts blasting the audience with historical facts, then move on to a fist fight in Dubai, head over to India central for a goofy battle of the sexes, have Jackie ride around with a CGI tricked out lion in the car (thus the cover of the movie), and culminates in a final “boss battle” up in the Tibetan mountains. In typical villainous fashion, he hounds the group and tries to steal it from them, including chasing them down in Dubai, as well as under ground and TO the treasure itself, fists and knives flailing all the way.
No adventure movie is complete without a villain, and that comes in the form of Randall (Sonu Sood), the final descendant of the original treasure trove’s owner.
Well, Jackie doesn’t seem to JUST want to have a Tomb Raider like adventure, he always wants to make history “fun”, by boring us to death with over 50% of the movie being a blatantly obvious historical lesson, as well as making sure we ALL know that the find belongs to the people of the world (and to the government as he says many times), and not to the individuals chasing them during the movie. When he gets hints of a famous Indian treasure lost in the border areas of the land near the Chinese/Indian border he embarks on a treasure hunting expedition with his Kung Fu nephew, his cute assistant, an Indian princess (Amyra Dashtur), her sister (Disha Patani) and a few more tag alongs. Jackie Chan plays Jack, a highly regarded archaeologist turned professor who has a love of Chinese and Indian history. Not to mention the blatantly over the top “knowledge is power” message that just gets pounded into the film from every direction. Having been known as making some of Jackie’s best movies ( Rumble in the Bronx, Supercop, First Strike) I was hoping for at least a partial return to form for Jackie, but instead it tries to imitate the glory days of Chan’s stunt filled youth, as well trying to go international by blending in some Bollywood stylings. Kung Fu Yoga happens to be one of the “ouch” category, I REALLY was looking forward to the film, as it was the fist time that legendary Hong Kong director/producer/writer Stanley Tong had directed a movie in 12 years. Lately that has started to change, with more and more of his films being relegated to “eh that was not bad” to “ouch” with the occasional good one thrown in. I didn’t care what it was, but if it starred Jackie Chan, then you can bet your butt that I would be there with bells on to watch it. Films like Police Story: Lockdown, Little Big Soldier, and Railroad Tigers has given us solid films that allow the character to age gracefully, and play to the strengths and weakness of age instead of doing what most action stars do, and try to milk the star studded days of youth.Ĭhan also used to be one those men that would sell the movie on his name alone.
Chan has actually been one of the few action stars to adjust pretty seamlessly to knowing his limitations and rolling with that. However, age catches up to us eventually, and the human body can only do so many back flips and crazy stunts for so long before nature takes its course (he was known for being pretty much uninsurable, and during his heyday paid out of pocket to insure his stunt men as well). His body has been through the ringer in more ways than you and I can possibly imagine, and his penchant for physical action based comedy carved him out one of the biggest niches Hong Kong cinema to date. His ability and willingness to give everything physically possible to a role has made him an action legend. Jackie Chan is a truly old school action star.
0 kommentar(er)
