Railroad Tigers

Jackie Chan stars in this movie about a small group of train station workers in Japanese-occupied China. The workers have been pulling off small heists of equipment from Japanese Army supply trains for some time, but all the young men in the group keep asking Ma Yuan (Chan) when they're going to do something big. This is a refrain uttered more than once, not just by the others in the group, but by other people around town, since apparently all the locals know what they're up to.

A failed attack on a bridge by the Eighth Route Army brings the group into contact with a wounded soldier. Through him they learn the bridge needs to be destroyed in four days, but their attempt to get him safely back to his unit is cut short. Since they don't know how to contact the Eighth Route Army, they'll have to destroy the bridge themselves.

The film is not played entirely seriously. Most of the Tigers can't remember how to draw the symbol of their group. Their initial attempt to acquire explosives, ends with them only getting one pack, and then having to use that to make good their escape. Sakamoto, a Captain of the Japanese Military police, gets drugged at one point, and spends the next few scenes after that being clumsy and addled as he tries to shake off the effects. A Japanese soldier tries to commit seppuku, but fails because he cuts his hand on the sword he's supposed to use. The film is upfront with this from the start, so it isn't as though it's a big surprise, but I went in unsure whether it would be a serious film or not. And when it does need to get serious to convey how dire a situation has become, it's able to do so.

The amount of CGI increases at the end, when crazy things start happening involving trains and tanks. It gets distracting at times, but overall the final battle is entertaining. There's a back-and-forth to it, as the sides trade the advantage between them on several fronts at once. Plus there's some unconventional uses of military hardware in there.

Chan plays Ma Yuan as mostly quiet, keeping a lot of pain locked inside. He's trying to fight the Japanese, but without getting any of these people helping him killed. He's lost a lot, and doesn't want to lose more people. Whenever the Japanese are around, especially Sakamoto, he adopts this slightly hunched over posture, plasters this big vacant grin on his face, and nods a lot. Playing dumb, basically. Sakamoto already regards all the locals as hicks that he can easily outsmart and anticipate, and so it plays to his expectations and uses it against them.