FBMR - Shanghai Noon
Film-Buff Movie Reviews


SHANGHAI NOON (2000) ***

Jackie Chan seems to play the same kind of character in every movie he’s in, but that doesn’t bother me too much because I’m not looking at his acting ability rather at his martial arts choreography and stunts. And this movie does not disappoint, adding new twists to much of the same signature moves, and inventing new moves and finding strange and interesting uses for a horseshoe. They are all still spectacular.

One of the things that bothered me in this movie was that half way through the movie Chinese people spoke to other Chinese people in broken English rather than their native tongue. That always annoys me, especially when earlier in the film we were reading subtitles.

Kidnapped from The Forbidden City in China, Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) is taken to America and held hostage. The three bravest Imperial Guards are commissioned to meet the ransom and retrieve the Princess. Chon Weng (Jackie Chan), not one of the three bravest, feels responsible for her having been kidnapped and wants to go and help. While in America Weng gets separated from the other guards and, while trying to get to Carson City, Nevada where the Princess is being held, gets tangled up with outlaw Roy O’Bannion (Owen Wilson).

The story is all right, nothing special, but it’s the banter between Weng and Roy that make the film seem cleverer that it really is. Actually, Roy seems to banter with almost every other character too. Wilson plays his character much as a young Woody Allen would. As an outlaw, he’s not too threatening, but for the viewers, he manages to make us laugh quite a bit.

IMDb - Shanghai Noon