Went to see the great big weird lie that is The Foreigner, the alleged new Jackie Chan movie. Because, surprise, it’s really a Pierce Brosnan political thriller with a random Jackie Chan running around occasionally in his own, nearly separate revenge thriller. It’s almost as if they wanted to make a movie about terrorism and counter-terrorism in London and got the budget from not one, not two, but three different Chinese production companies who may have requested they throw Chan into the flick. So they did and we wind up with a confusing movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be but was marketed as a more somber, more serious Jackie Chan action movie, but only is a little bit.
The basic premise DOES start with Jackie Chan as the father of a girl who is killed in a terrorist bombing. But it really is far more focused on Pierce Brosnan as a former IRA (Irish Republican Army) member turned politician as he tries to work both his Irish and English allies to figure out who did the bombing. But, of course, he might have a connection to the bombers and all his promises of having gone legit may be lies. But Jackie Chan wants to know who did the bombing and is sure Brosnan knows so he occasionally hunts and harasses him.
First off, even the movie admits that it’s weird the IRA are the villains. It’s been 19 years since the peace accord, they point out. But, yeah, this movie thinks its in the 90s and wants to make the Irish the bad guys in their London terrorism movie. OK, that’s fine, and then they want to insert a British citizen of Chinese descent and call the movie The Foreigner and not really make any thematic connections… I mean, are they suggesting the Non-Northern Irish are foreigners in Great Britain? Is it something to do with Chan’s violent past coming back to haunt him in the guise of the IRA? Does Chan care one bit about the politics or is he just purely out for revenge?
And does Chan even matter in the movie? He doesn’t. You could take him out and you’d still have the political pot-boiler that is the struggle over past Struggles. About a new breed of IRA terrorists and how they work against the old breed… how the government tries to track them down, and how Brosnan dances the line of the British establishment and his IRA roots.
I’m not gonna say the pure political terrorism movie is bad… it seemed perfectly well made, looked good, and I guess the acting is good (I’ve heard Brosnan’s Irish accent is terrible, but I didn’t notice). But when there’s a random Jackie Chan lurking around and popping up on occasion, it gets really distracting as to what I was even watching. And that took me out of the pic.
Jackie Chan is playing a serious, troubled older man with a particular set of skills and he wants his revenge. He’s definitely not the spry kung-fu comedian he is in his older movies, nor should he be. He’s in his sixties now. He does some action scenes, some of which he’s doing and some where maybe they had a stunt man. I guess it’s a fine, serious performance but mainly he just looks sad.
So, yeah, I’m really mixed and uncertain about what I think of the movie. I’d say it’s a decent political thriller and I’d say it’s randomly an occasionally good action movie but not enough of one for action fans sitting through a lot of political chatter. Maybe see it if you are a huge fan of both Jackie Chan AND Pierce Brosnan…?
Score: 74