Review of Gorgeous

After Rush Hour, Jackie went back to Hong Kong to try his hand at something different. What it turned out to be was the romantic comedy Gorgeous. Jackie said this would probably never get shown in the States because it was too Asian for a western audience, but Columbia TriStar picked it up and I bought it when it was priced to buy. I thought it was a good story with a few good fight scenes, but the dubbing was awful. The voices were all overplayed and Jackie didn't use his own voice for this one. Bradley James Allan makes a huge splash in the fight scenes he's in with Jackie. Shu Qi is great as the innocent and childlike Bu, as she sees everything as a fairy tale. I think the reason a lot of people didn't like this one was because Columbia TriStar hyped it up as an action flick, rather than a romantic comedy. Even the back of the video box makes it out to be a action piece. I knew long before I saw it that it was different, so I knew what I was getting into.

I got the Hong Kong DVD of this movie today and it was much better. There is more detail to the story rather than the story jumping around like it does in the U.S. edit. The DVD also has lots of features on it. These features include a trailer, an interview with Jackie and director Vincent Kok, a making of featurette (where Jackie states he enjoyed making it more than Rush Hour), and the music video to the song from the film (Two versions actually, Cantonese and Mandarin).

Of course this will never be as good as his other movies like Police Story or Who Am I?, but I give him credit for trying something different. It worked well for me and had enough fight scenes in it to amuse me.