Directed by: Tom Dey
Starring: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, Roger Yuan, Walton Goggins, Xander Berkley
From: Touchstone Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment
For a random revisit seen because it was on Prime, not too bad.Admittedly the humor doesn’t always work for me and the main conceit is that Owen Wilson totally plays an Owen Wilson character from the 20th century in a late 19th century Wild West setting… a concept not always for me. Yet Jackie Chan’s charm-recent discussion of him on a messageboard gave me the germ of the idea to watch something from him-does help and I just had to roll w/ a film that sometimes uses modern songs and Chan’s character is known as “Chon Wang”… “a terrible cowboy name”. Other Western nods include Roy and Van Cleef.
Wang is part of the Imperial Guard of China who has to rescue the Princess who is in Carson City, Nevada and meets up with bandit Wilson… who is turned on by the rest of his gang, including Walton Goggins; of course Goggins was perfect as an insane cowboy. There’s Native Americans, peace pipes, a bordello, duels, a former member of the Imperial Guard who is a villain, a horse drinking whiskey, and the unfortunate real life 19th century American practice of Chinese immigrants being used to build railroads.
As tremendously silly as it is, at least the action still delivered and it’s always a treat to see how Ol’ Jackie uses the environment for all those creative martial arts scenes, even if they were not especially filmed well. I recall Shanghai Knights as being comparable to this-although Donnie Yen’s presence did help-so one day in the far future I’ll revisit that.
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