This movie begins with a really fun sequence with Chan covered in roller skates and has a lot of fun fights, although not as much of the Keatonesque fight humor as in some movies.
But my god, what an inept story. It will tell you everything you need to know about the sense of it when I tell you a character buys a set of four antique items, destroys three to make the remaining one unique, and is then congratulated because that item is "three times" what it was worth before. Mathematically that's a big loss, so why is he being congratulated?
Nothing in this movie makes more sense than that. Motivations are all over the map, attempts to fill in some emotional back story for the characters are perfunctory, the stuff about relic theft seems well- intentioned but unconnected the feel of the story, and one has to assume the fight scenes were designed before the story was written, as the story goes through various convolutions just to get characters in the right place for some big action scene.
I'm torn between giving this a 6 and a 7. Ultimately it's a matter of mluch action scenes I'd rate at an 8 can counterbalance story scenes that I'd give a 4, and since there are some big action-less chunks, it's possible a 6 would be best. But I'll be nice, because it did have some very good moments.
But my god, what an inept story. It will tell you everything you need to know about the sense of it when I tell you a character buys a set of four antique items, destroys three to make the remaining one unique, and is then congratulated because that item is "three times" what it was worth before. Mathematically that's a big loss, so why is he being congratulated?
Nothing in this movie makes more sense than that. Motivations are all over the map, attempts to fill in some emotional back story for the characters are perfunctory, the stuff about relic theft seems well- intentioned but unconnected the feel of the story, and one has to assume the fight scenes were designed before the story was written, as the story goes through various convolutions just to get characters in the right place for some big action scene.
I'm torn between giving this a 6 and a 7. Ultimately it's a matter of mluch action scenes I'd rate at an 8 can counterbalance story scenes that I'd give a 4, and since there are some big action-less chunks, it's possible a 6 would be best. But I'll be nice, because it did have some very good moments.