The Foreigner

I really wanted to see Jackie Chan going the Liam Neeson route, playing an old guy out to fuck up the people who hurt his family, so here we are.

The people in question are members of the IRA, but possibly as a result of this, the movie spends a lot more time on all the politicking, backstabbing, and maneuvering going on among the guys in Ireland's government who used to be IRA. Including Pierce Brosnan, as a Deputy Minister. He actually ends up as the focus of the film. The British government wants answers, and he needs answers to maintain his cushy job. But he can't be seen as a traitor to the cause. He's cheating on his wife, his wife is cheating on him, Jackie expects the names of the people responsible for the attack, and keeps blowing Brosnan's shit up.

There are long stretches of the movie, where Jackie Chan is barely in the movie at all. He's lurking somewhere in the woods near Brosnan's home, watching and waiting. It's an interesting approach, putting him in the role of this a lurking threat, while we watch Brosnan flail about trying to keep all his plates spinning. A bit like doing a Batman movie primarily from the perspective of some mob boss that knows Batman is going to come crashing down on his head sooner or later.

I'd still have preferred more scenes of Jackie Chan somberly grieving, or beating the crap out of people. Not that there aren't several of those scenes, I just wanted more. They made a big deal about Brosnan's nephew Sean being a former Ranger and tracker, who goes into the woods alone, and that didn't last very long. It makes sense; neither Chan or his character are spring chickens, and even with him keeping the jumping around to a relative minimum, he can't keep that stuff up for too long. And it is very different to watch him fighting and actually trying to end fights fast. Slamming dudes headfirst into trees, flipping people through tables. For a while there, he seemed to be using a surprise knee to the face a lot, to great effect. I really enjoyed those parts of the movie. The rest of it was fine, but not what I was there for.