Wouldn’t
it be nice if Chinese cinema devoted one fiftieth of the time and attention
they spend on the Japanese occupation to the events of the Tiananmen Square
Massacre and the Cultural Revolution instead? At least the war and the
resistance offer opportunities for good action sequences, which is all we’ve
really asked of Jackie Chan. To his credit, Chan has found ways to act his age
and still be an international action movie star, most notably in collaboration
with director Ding Sheng (including Little Big Warrior and the bizarrely under-appreciated Police Story: Lockdown). Produced with the Mainland market in mind,
Ding’s Railroad Tigers (trailer here) opens this Friday
in New York.
Ma
Yuan is the grizzled leader of a gang of petty thieves ostensibly working
various jobs related to the railroad. They regularly pull off small-scale
capers targeting the Japanese authorities and collaborators as best they can.
However, they get the call-up to the big leagues when Ma Yuan shelters a
wounded Eight Army commando charged with blowing up a critical supply-line
bridge. The dedicated soldier isn’t going to make it, so Ma Yuan and his tigers
adopt his likely suicide mission.
Of
course, they will need help, so they manage to recruit Fan Chuan, a Rick
Blaine-like noodle shop owner, who was once the sharp-shooting bodyguard of a
Nationalist warlord. Unfortunately, the Japanese also get reinforcements when
legendary Inspector General Yuko Nakashima arrives. She is fierce (played by
Lanxin Zhang, a frequent femme fatale henchperson in Jackie Chan films), but
one could argue her high rank makes the occupying Japanese look weirdly
progressive.
Once
again, Chan largely (but not entirely) acknowledges his sixty-some years during
RR Tigers. Throughout most of the
film, he is the terse-speaking center of the team, sharing the action duties
with the rest of the ensemble on equitable terms. Of course, he takes over the
big climatic set piece sequence, but by that time many characters will be dead,
in accordance with the conventions of Dirty
Dozen-style big mission movies. Old Man Chan also develops some truly
appealing chemistry with Fan Xu, glammed down to look at least ten years older
as his love interest, the widowed Auntie Qin. Frankly, it would have been nice
to see more of them together.
The
first two acts have their share of entertaining stunt work, but nothing that
will really dazzle fans’ minds. However, the climatic blowing-the-bridge
sequence is a doozy. It is nice to know JChan can still get the job done. It is
also always good fun to watch Zhang Lanxin throw it down.
RR Tigers has also garnered
attention for the unheralded return of Chan’s son Jaycee after his pot
conviction. They even share a scene together that Mainland-HK audiences have
read considerable irony into. You have to feel a little for Chan fils. If he
grew up in the Hollywood establishment, nobody would care about a minor pot
bust. He’d working again after a quick “mistakes were made” non-apology. It
also seems tough that he was transparently named after his father, but does not
have the benefit of being a “junior.” As a further Easter Egg, look out for a
fleeting cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars in the wrap-around
framing device.
