The plot: A department store bombing claims the life of restaurant
manager Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan)’s daughter. Distraught at losing the only
family he had left, he pressures terrorist-turned-government-official Liam
Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan) to produce the names of the bombers responsible. As
Quan’s desperation for answers reaches explosive levels, Hennessy is under his
own pressure to find the culprits, as he digs into his old connections to find
the rogue elements.
Well, it seems like Jackie Chan has gone full Taken on this
one; I won’t claim to know all the ins and outs of Chan’s legendary
filmography, but something this dark and morally dubious isn’t what first comes
to mind. Then again, maybe it should. He fills in the usual action-thriller
role of a former military officer who gets brought into action through the
death of a loved one, and manages to bring some real intensity to it. He also
gets to bring his fighting prowess to a more low-flash affair that turns out a
lot better than it has any right to; more on that later.
Brosnan, in an equally
unprecedented role, gets a chance to flex his natural accent for a change and
manoeuvres through the very murky morality of his character very nicely. It’s
basically a snapshot of how he could have been as James Bond in the Daniel
Craig era; fitting, seeing as this is directed by Martin Campbell who gave us
Casino Royale. Charlie Murphy (no, not Eddie’s brother, so we unfortunately
don’t get to see her get served pancakes by Prince) is very effective in her
hard-drinking pivotal role, Lia Williams as Brosnan’s superior adds some good
pressure to his character, Ray Fearon as the leader of a British
counter-terrorism unit plays that note well, and Dermot Crowley brings a lot of
menace to his performance, especially in his scenes opposite Brosnan.
Aside from applying one of the better franchise reboots yet
with Casino Royale, Martin Campbell also gave us the rather lukewarm Green
Lantern film. I am so thankful that this film’s approach to action is more of
the former than the latter. Chan’s involvement, both as the ‘lead’ actor and as
a producer, might indicate that this will feature the usual Hong Kong-style
fight scenes that he’s been a long-time champion of, and in a way, that is
accurate. He gets a nice handful of moments where he can show off that he still
has the moves but the action is a lot more grounded than that overall. We get
explosions connected to the main terrorism plot, but most of the action
involves gritty throwdowns and economical shootouts. Hand-to-hand combat with
lots of hard hits meant for damage rather than spectacle, and gunfights where
actual threat of death is a more pressing issue than how easily the enemy can
miss the target two feet in front of them; textbook low-flash action. By
finding a weird middle-ground between Chan’s roundhouse wheelhouse and
Campbell’s penchant for brutalised realism, the film’s cred as an action film
is fairly solid.
Its cred as a thriller, on the other hand, is far less even.
Taking the usual politicized route for its thrills, with the Troubles of
Ireland as a thematic backdrop, the plot is full of paranoia and deception… on
Brosnan’s side of things. His dealings with the government at large, trying to
find the terrorists responsible for the initial attack and tapping into his old contacts to track them down are all done
very well, helped by Brosnan acting the absolute hell out of this material.
While it does get into areas of confusion as to who is actually on whose side,
similar to another thriller involving the IRA with ’71, it’s coherent enough to
make the occasionally convoluted plot developments sink in properly.
But,
apparently, this isn’t Liam’s story; it’s Quan’s. His grief fuels his
character’s involvement in the story as a whole, and his interactions with Liam
is one of the bigger initial pressures for Liam to find the culprits. However,
as the story fleshes itself out, Quan fades so far into the background as to
make the audience wonder why he, the titular character, is even here in the
first place. Yeah, his actions inform Liam’s character but, with the amount of
governmental and societal pressure on him already, they don’t feel entirely
necessary to be included. Like, not even as a means to further the film’s
themes about guerrilla factions destroying the lives of civilians.
I never, ever
thought I would get to this point but let’s get into some conspiracy
theorizing; there is something rather off about this film. Look up this film
online and most articles and Wiki pages discussing it mention the main enemy
being the IRA, the faction in the Troubles that wants Ireland to secede from
the United Kingdom… except it isn’t. Or, at least, it isn’t in the version that
made it to cinemas over here. In various scenes throughout the film, including
a rather crucial exchange between Liam and Quan, the characters are clearly
heard saying ‘UDA’, badly ADR-ed over what they’re actually saying. Not knowing
all that much about the Troubles off-hand, I looked it up. Turns out that the
UDA were the opposing side of the Troubles; the loyalists to the United
Kingdom.
This change not only is a tad perplexing, altering the story by
completely changing who the villains actually are, it’s also a little curious
that I can find no other evidence of this online. With how much TMI detail I’ve
gone into with these reviews over the years, I hope you will take me for my
word that this actually was a thing that happened. But why? Australia is still
very much attached to the British by sovereignty, so was it changed
deliberately to fit their agenda? Was this an actual Harry Bosco situation to
propagandize this otherwise pretty decent film? Is this a ploy to turn the
Australian public against the Republic of Ireland, given how they have been
repeatedly brought up during the marriage equality debate going on right now
over here? Did Liam Hennessy help Hitler sink the Titanic? Did The Foreigner cause 9/11?!
Perhaps I’ve said too much.
All in all, jokes about minor details aside, this is pretty
good. The acting is damn effective, particularly from Chan and Brosnan getting
a chance to flex some real dramatic muscle here, the approach to the action
scenes is very gritty and cathartically brutal, and while the plot can get
tangled up in itself at times, it still provides a decent take on ideas of
terrorism, national service and vigilantism… even if the title character feels
out of place in what is supposedly his own movie.
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