|
Although lovestruck by every beautiful face he sees, to the point of being inarticulate, Jimmy
Tong (Jackie Chan), a taxi driver,
is impressive with his ability to skillfully weave in and out of the city traffic and to drive at breakneck speed. He is hired as the chauffeur of Mark Devlin (Jason Isaacs), a multimillionaire secret agent who possesses a $2 million tuxedo laden with gadgets. On his first day on the job, a bomb explodes and fatally injures his boss. When asked who could have done it, Devlin mutters something like "striders." Before Jimmy can recover his wits, Devlin's cell phone rings giving details of a secret operation. Jimmy decides to impersonate Devlin although he has no idea about anything. He puts on Devlin's tuxedo and immediately, to his surprise, he takes on extraordinary powers. He becomes a fighting machine, destroying virtually everything he touches. He and agent De Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt) team up to uncover information about a secret laboratory owned by the power-hungry Banning (Richie Coster) who raises bugs called water striders. With a water strider queen, Banning intends to contaminate the water supply of the world. Such infected water can swiftly and fatally dehydrate a person's cells and shrivel his vital organs. As thugs constantly threaten the life of "Mr. Devlin," Jimmy has to watch his back as he pursues his personal goal of locating the assassin of his boss. As he joins De Blaine in search of the deadly bugs, how long will it be before his "cover" is blown?
Anyone who has seen a Jackie Chan movie knows what to expect: fighting prowess of a kung-fu
expert, computer-generated special effects like outrunning a car and climbing walls like a spider as well as death-defying stunts, but what will pleasantly surprise Jackie's
fans in this movie is his ability to sing like a pro and to gracefully dance the mambo! These, with his quaint Chinese accent and broken English (to create a few
laughs) make him seem like the total entertainer. The filmmakers must attempt to flesh out his character for him to "carry" the whole movie, as the rest of the actors are
shadowy and their actions mechanical. The storyline is a modernized storybook myth whose hero possesses a talisman that can endow him with awesome powers.
To dress up an old tale, the moviemakers pepper it with high falluting jargon and hi-tech gizmos to make it seem pseudo scientific but all these do nothing to make the film more comprehensible.
In spite of its absurdity and lack of substance just like most action/comedy films, this film
definitely entertains. It seems there is nothing Jackie cannot do. And his humor does not have a thing about toilets, horse manure or dog semen in ιclairs as in Van
Wilder. As with most action pictures, parents will have to make young people aware that action/violence due to martial arts skills is there to defend or protect and
not to provoke or heighten enmity; also that objects supposedly magical belong to the world of the storybook.
In the real world, our strength is in ourselves. Our life is in our hands.
(Date reviewed: October 4, 2002)
|
