Mortal combat

Noel Vera

"The Medallion" is all about, well, this pair of medallions that
when put together grants eternal life (superhuman powers included at
no extra charge). Hong Kong police officer Eddie Yang (Jackie Chan)
isn't actually looking for it, but British evildoer Snakehead
(Julian Sands) and his gang of Keystone Goons is, and Yang is after
Snakehead.

That's the plot, more or less…but plot was never important in a
Jackie Chan film. The movie starts out entertainingly enough: the
sequences where Chan chases and is chased by bad guys in Hong Kong
and in early parts of his visit to Britain are loose-limbed funny
(thanks in a big way to the action choreography of Sammo Hung, a
great martial-arts actor and filmmaker ("Pedicab Driver,"
the "Martial Law" TV series), and good friend of Chan's); it's when
the medallion causes Chan to be reborn as a super-powered eternal
that the movie dies a little--how exciting is a Jackie Chan flying
kick when it's done with digitally erased wires? How thrilling, when
he blows villains away with a snap of his fingers? Granted there are
ways to make CGI-enhanced action sequences entertaining, if not
actually exciting (didn't like the fight scenes in "The Matrix" but
did like the parody done in "Shrek" and, better still, the man vs.
cow battle--with "bullet time" milk spurts--in "Kung Pow"); director
Gordon Chan, unfortunately, doesn't seem to want to bother trying--
the digitally enhanced climactic showdown between Sands and Chan is
perfunctorily done, with nary a joke, slapstick or otherwise, in
sight.

This wasn't as big a problem, or at least I never noticed that it
was as big a problem in Chan's Hong Kong films. At his best, in
the "Project A" or "Armour of God" movies or above all in "Drunken
Master 2" he achieved a level of energy and inventive, deliriously
intricate motion comparable to Buster Keaton's great comedies (Chan
reportedly saw quite a few Keaton films early in his career when
they screened in a retrospective in the Hong Kong International Film
Festival). Chan has a similar no-nonsense, let's-get-it-on spirit as
Keaton, a silent comedian's irrepressible urge to inflict the
maximum amount of punishment (on himself as much as others) in the
minimum amount of time, with (unlike Chaplin) few tears wasted on
the pain involved. And you watched; you couldn't pull your eyes away
from guy hurting on the big screen, especially since the outtakes of
mistakes at the end of the film proved that it was really him there
on the ground, writhing in agony, and not some badly paid stunt
double. This was the secret of Chan's appeal, and the reason he was
such a huge box office draw in Asia for decades.

His Hollywood films are a decidedly different proposition. Insurance
agencies won't cover a man who does stuntwork that would make a
crash-test dummy hesitate, so his stunts have been severely toned
down; Chan's brand of humor isn't thought to have enough broad
appeal with American audiences (though slapstick is the one form of
comedy that doesn't need subtitles), so he's paired off with
American comics (Chris Rock, Owen Wilson…in the case of "The
Tuxedo," the producers thought a pair of large breasts--Jennifer
Love Hewitt--would serve just as well). Lee Evans, who functions as
Chan's Caucasian comic partner in this picture doesn't have the kind
of chemistry Owen Wilson had with Chan in "Shanghai Noon" (Wilson
played Californian fruitcake to Chan's taciturn wonton), plus Evans
is about as endearing as a set of fingernails dragged across a
chalkboard, but--like fungus--he does grow on you after a while. The
generally likeable cast includes Claire Forlani (very easy on the
eyes--seems to do most of her martial arts, too), and John Rhys-
Davis (sadly underused). Sands as Snakehead isn't as outrageous as
when he had rats crawling over his naked body in Dario
Argento's "Phantom of the Opera" but he's still out there,
nevertheless. Christy Chung does a spectacular turn as Evan's
supposedly domesticated wife turned deadly martial-arts fighter when
thugs invade their home, but quickly drops from sight without so
much as a by-your-leave (writing is credited to five people, usually
a sign of trouble finishing the script).

Silly premise, grating co-star, a screenplay that feels assembled
out of cuttings from a Chinese newspaper; movies have been hung,
drawn and quartered for far lesser sins. But Chan has made so many
films, and put so much of himself (not to mention the odd compound
fracture) into them and this one with so little apparent ego that
complaining about niggling little details like a climax that doesn't
work seems actually churlish. You don't want to give actors a pass
on the basis of effort alone, but there's a certain point in a man's
career--perhaps his fiftieth broken bone onwards--that your outlook
on his pictures' many flaws starts mellowing a bit. Not to mention
the fact that "The Medallion" seems to deal with death a little more
thoroughly than is usual for a Chan film (most of the time you get
the impression that he's unkillable, though hardly invulnerable); in
this context and in the light of Chan's advanced years (he's fifty,
though he still retains his boyish looks), the granting of eternal
life (by an angel-faced Buddhist child) feels more than a little
like a rather poignant act of wish-fulfillment--as if Chan hates
having grown so old, and wishes to entertain us for years to
come. "The Medallion" isn't the best of Chan's recent offerings
(that would probably be "Shanghai Noon"), and of course it doesn't
even come close to his Hong Kong work, but it'll do till the next--
and hopefully better--picture comes along.

(First published in Businessworld, September 12, 2003)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)