The Myth (2005)
Reviewed by: cal42 on 2009-11-01
Summary: Flashes of brilliance, but that's about all...
Jack (Jackie Chan) is an archaeologist plagued with recurring dreams of being a general in Qin dynasty China, escorting the Emperor’s new concubine Ok Soo (Kim Hee-Sun) through hostile territory. During his waking hours, Jack and his friend William (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) search an Indian tomb for a device that can counteract the laws of gravity. While there, Jack finds evidence that his dreams may in fact be his past life, and that the princess may have been real.

THE MYTH is a nice idea that is quite badly executed.

The film is split into two timelines – Qin dynasty China (where Chan is bizarrely dubbed for his Mandarin lines unless I’m very much mistaken) and present day Hong Kong. It soon becomes apparent that the period scenes just don’t work on any level and soon become increasingly irritating. When you think of Jackie Chan, you don’t immediately think of period epics, and this looks like someone thought it would be a good idea to jump on the HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS bandwagon.

On the other hand, the modern day thread is surprisingly entertaining. Tony Leung Ka-Fai plays a good stooge to Chan and their banter is favourably reminiscent of the ARMOUR OF GOD dynamic between Chan and Alan Tam. Furthermore, one of the more successful sequences of the film involves Mallika Sherawat and a glue factory. It’s a scene that is forced and contrived and has every sight gag clearly signposted, but is no less fun for it. In fact, it’s classic Chan from beginning to end.

The problem is that these flashes of entertainment never last long enough. Both the Tony Leung character and Sherawat’s character are dispensed with just when you’re getting into the fun and you’re thrown back into the story, which is frankly not that interesting. As with a lot of Jackie Chan films made from the 90s onwards, the story has great ambition but ends up being messy and confused. A villain is introduced later in the film and I’m still a little hazy as to what he’s doing there.

It’s not just the garbled plotting that causes problems. There is some truly awful CGI work in this film, particularly when it comes to shots of horses fighting each other. Whoever thought that these shots could work needs to be kicked out of the business right now – it sounds like the bright idea of a sugared-up eight-year-old kid. There are also problems in the script department, and the age-old problem of a Chinese (and Indian) cast speaking English crops up yet again, with portions of dialogue being quite hard to understand. There’s also a speech given by Tony Leung that just makes me cringe. He’s talking about myths, and says that a hundred years ago, landing on the moon was just a myth. Erm, no. Landing on the moon was a dream, an aspiration, but not a myth because nobody had claimed to have done it yet. I’m prepared to concede that this is a translation problem and just one of those language quirks that are hard to get around, but it still sounds totally boneheaded.

To sum up, THE MYTH is not terribly great - and at just over two hours in length, it’s also noticeably bloated. Which is a terrible shame as it has some really fun elements and a couple of great scenes. I’ve always said that Jackie Chan films work best on a smaller scale, and this is a classic example of what happens when you try to add too many ingredients to the pot. And it’s getting quite funny when characters refer to Mr Chan as “young man” without a trace of irony. And is it just me, or does Tony Leung Ka-Fai look confusingly similar to Ken Lo? And does the book at the end really have “The Mnth” written on the cover?
Reviewer Score: 5