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Chan's 'Medallion' gets old quick
Jackie Chan stars as Inspector Eddie Yang in 'The Medallion'
Screen Gems
Director: Gordon Chan.
Stars: Jackie Chan, Lee Evans, Claire Forlani.
MPAA rating: PG-13, for action violence and some sexual humor.
"The Medallion" gets very old in its second half even though it runs barely 90 minutes.
It's an amalgam of every latterday Jackie Chan movie and too many other action films. Even Chan's charm needs a proper channeling apparatus.
"The Medallion" went into production more than two years ago under the title "The Highbinders" and has had its premiere penciled in for more different dates in 2002 and 2003 than Heidi Fleiss' girls.
In a pure personality performance, Chan embodies a Hong Kong detective named Eddie Yang who is ordered to team again with buffoonish British Interpol buddy Arthur Watson (Lee Evans in a part once considered by Rowan Atkinson).
The amiably mismatched duo are paired further with Nicole James (classy Claire Forlani), liaison between Interpol and Southeast Asian Security Forces.
They're to take on master criminal Snakehead (Julian Sands) and his relatively few henchmen.
Snakehead needs the two halves of a magical medallion, "the Holy Grail of Eastern mysticism," to achieve immortality along with the superhuman powers to enjoy it.
Care to catalogue the pictures sharing such a premise?
"The Medallion's" first half has an entertaining, if highly exaggerated, foot chase. At least there's a pretense of feet touching the ground.
But once Eddie and Snakehead devolve into their own clones for a series of essentially unwinnable fights, "The Medallion" lapses into a loop of interchangeable, non-threatening fights, escapes and rescues, any number of which could be omitted without anyone being the wiser.
Once the special effects take over, "The Medallion" is indistinguishable from hundreds of other films that regard thousands of densely edited action snippets as entertainment.
Written by a committee and directed by Gordon Chan, the movie alternates cartoon violence with the bedpan humor that delights little boys -- such as the stranger, about 8 years old, in the next seat.
Although almost no one else was laughing, he howled through a routine almost identical to one in -- is it "Bad Boys II"? -- in which several people hear two straight cops conversing ambiguously in a way that suggests they're lovers.
The boy busted a gut at one admittedly amusing sequence in which Watson figures out that the invulnerable Eddie can be knifed without doing lasting harm. No film that can make a child chortle with such abandon can be counted a complete loss.
