Review: Skiptrace

In a year of reboots and resurgences comes Jackie Chan with Skiptrace, which resurrects the odd-couple buddy movie formula that held him in good stead with U.S. audiences nearly two decades ago. Of course, Chan himself needs no reviving - at 62 years of age, the living legend might not be making much of a dent with North American audiences but he is still one of the biggest and most bankable stars in Asia.

Skiptrace is not one of Chan's better efforts. It's clumsy and slapdash, nonsensical and frenetic and, at its core, a whole lot of nothing. Yet even the worst of Chan's movies are worth a watch for the star's trademark prop-fighting and innovative stunts. Chan has always admitted his emulation of Buster Keaton, the extraordinarily gifted silent screen comic who, like Chan, performed all of his own stunts. Indeed, as charming and funny with a line as Chan can be, no one comes to see him talk, they come to see him move. Chan nods to Keaton's famous scene in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (a two-story building lands on Keaton, who remains unharmed thanks to a single open window) in the opening sequence of Skiptrace, which finds Chan's Bennie running from one quayside home to another as they fall like dominoes. Perhaps Chan is not as spry as he used to be, but he is a man with energy that would shame those a third of his age and he remains tremendously eager to please.

That eagerness buoys the movie's standard plotting. Bennie is haunted by his failure to save his partner Yung (Eric Tsang) from a trap set by Hong Kong mob kingpin the Matador. His obsession with exposing businessman Victor Wong as the Matador has taken over his life. He's dismayed to learn that Yung's daughter Samantha (Bingbing Fan), whom he promised to protect, has been working semi-undercover in one of Wong's casinos. That same casino is the one in which American Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville), evading some Russian gangsters who are after him, witnesses a murder committed by Wong. Skiptrace does a Midnight Run as Bennie tracks down Connor and drags him kicking and screaming across eastern Russia, the Mongolian steppes, and the Gobi desert so they can return to Hong Kong, incriminate Wong, and rescue Samantha, who has been captured by Wong's goons.

The locations are enjoyable and provide unexpected bits of fun, particularly the yurt villagers' sing-along to Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" and Bennie and Connor going through some rapids on an inflated-pigskin raft. Director Renny Harlin keeps things moving along, though he isn't especially diligent in preventing some of the dialogue from falling flat or the CGI from looking cheap. For all its slipshod nature, there's something refreshing in Skiptrace's simplicity. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than a silly movie, and that unpretentiousness delivers its own charms.

Skiptrace

Directed by: Renny Harlin

Written by: Jay Longino, BenDavid Grabinski

Starring: Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Bingbing Fan, Eric Tsang, Eve Torres, Winston Chao, Lanxin Zhang, Michael Wong