Chinese New Year isnt quite the same without a Jackie Chan spectacular. Recent years, coinciding with his ascent to Hollywood superstardom (not that this is necessarily the decisive factor), Jackie seemed to have lost his way back to his celluloid home. Though he enjoys larger budgets and more control than virtually any other Hong Kong filmmaker, such late 1990s new year blockbusters as Mr. Nice Guy, Gorgeous, and Who Am I? are inferior to his American pictures, both in terms of laughs and inventiveness. The Accidental Spy thus comes as something of a relief, his best since Police Story 4: First Strike five years ago. Though it breaks no new ground, and (truth be told) the star would have been better suited for the boyish role a decade ago, the combination of Jackie, director Teddy Chan, and martial arts coordinator Stephen Tung, has created a light confection with sufficient humor and thrills to make for an enjoyable 100 minutes.
Ivy Hos script, while not approaching the heights achieved in her Comrades, Almost a Love Story, is flexible and whimsical enough to provide a plausible rationale for the mixture of action and intrigue with thankfully little of the sentimentality and puerility that infested Chans more recent efforts. The stars personality and persona are well suited for the role of Buck Yuen, an idealistic sporting equipment salesman who gets involved in the search for a deadly anthrax vaccine in Istanbul. Good use is made of the exotic locale, and there is a hint of romance with a gentle but far-from-innocent maiden in distress (Vivian Hsu). But these merely provide window dressing for the main attraction: the stunts.
The action scenes show the star and his team have lost nothing of their ingenuity. A classic Jackie Chan moment is provided in the Turkish bath sequence, with Buck on the run from assassins, sliding on the sudsy surfaces and running stark naked through a bazaar, attempting to hide his privates with brooms, plates, tablecloths, and tambourines until he acrobatically fashions himself a garb out of a piece of hanging cloth. The grand finale probably broke a budgetary record, along with a large percentage of Istanbuls vehicles, as Jackie destroys a small plane and later careens down a highway on a burning oil tanker about to explode.
The Accidental Spy isnt Jackies greatest, but its his finest in years and an auspicious beginning to the Year of the Snake, for both the star and the Hong Kong film industry.
3 Stars
This review is copyright (c) 2001 by Paul Fonoroff. All rights reserved. No part of the review may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Reviewer Score: 6
|