Thursday, January 24, 2019

Kung Fu Yoga

You have a Chinese archaeologist trying to find a lost treasure that, a thousand years ago, was being delivered from an empire in India to encourage the Chinese dynasty to help in a war. The current princess of the royal lineage gets involved, as does the current heir to the ruler who had been waging war against them, each of them trying to claim the treasure, while the archaeologist is firmly in the "it belongs in a museum" camp.

Jackie Chan plays the archaeologist - named Jack Chan, so Jackie has hit the Tony Danza stage of only playing characters with his name, for simplicity's sake no doubt - and then the main characters from the two royal heritages are played by Indian actors (Ashmita played by Disha Patani and Randall by Sonu Sood), so it's maybe a mixture of film styles. I know zilch about Indian film, only that people satirize or reference it by having big dance sequences. Which this film does. Like, the plot is finished, let's all just dance for several minutes.

I skipped that part. Non-plot relevant dancing is not my thing. Plot relevant dancing isn't really my thing, either.

There's a lot of, not great CGI, especially CGI animals. Wolves, snakes - one guy gets bit in the face by two cobras, his face swells, but he does not die. Which seems unlikely. There's a car chase in Dubai where Jackie's in a SUV that had a lion in the back. I know we don't want Jackie Chan getting eaten by a lion, it's just really noticeable CGI.

The fight sequences are solid, especially allowing for Jackie Chan's age, he's still got some moves. Although the one where he's testing Jones' skills as a way to dissuade the pack of wolves from attacking their camp didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Especially since it didn't work, the wolves did attack, and then they drove them off with snowballs. That whole thing was a little strange.

2 comments:

SallyP said...

Why on earth would there be a lion in the back of an suv?

CalvinPitt said...

The SUV belonged to some rich sheik guy. I guess if you're that rich, you have to go the extra mile to show off.