'3 Black Chicks Review...'
SHANGHAI NOON (2000) Rated PG-13; running time 109 minutes Genre: Action/Comedy IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0184894 Official site: http://studio.go.com/movies/shanghainoon/index.html Written by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar Directed by: Tom Dey Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, Roger Yuan, Xander Berkeley, Walt Goggins, Brandon Merrill
Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/bamsshanghai.html
Remember back in my ROMEO MUST DIE review where I said that Jet Li displayed "the charm and humor of Jackie Chan"? Well, strap me down and slap me silly--because I was just plain wrong. I like Jet Li, but he's no Jackie Chan.
The Story (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**): Set in the late 1800s, SHANGHAI NOON is a fun mix of humor, martial arts, riffs on and homages to Western flicks ranging from HIGH NOON to BLAZING SADDLES to BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, with a few Eastern movie standards ("You killed my uncle!") thrown in for good measure.
After Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) is kidnapped away from Forbidden City, China and taken to America's western frontier of Carson City, Nevada, Imperial Guard Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) is reluctantly allowed to go to America along with three other guardsmen, to rescue her. Fate meets him on a train, when Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson), a flirtatious train robber with a heart o' gold (and a nose for finding gold), crosses paths with Chon and eventually teams up with him to help Chon find the princess. Standing in their way is the traitorous ex-guardsman Lo Fong (Roger Yuan) who is behind Pei Pei's kidnapping, Marshall Nathan VanCleef (Xander Berkeley), out to arrest Roy and Chon, and Wallace (Walt Goggins), one of Roy's trigger-happy newbie bandits.
The Upshot: The word best used to describe SHANGHAI NOON is, "fun". Not just fun-ny - though, it was definitely that - "Shanghai" worked well because it never took itself too seriously (ya gotta love a Cowboy movie where the Indians aren't treated like Noble Savages, and they poke fun at themselves), and neither did its two lead actors/characters. And because of its lighthearted approach, I was easily able to ignore plot slippages that might otherwise have bugged the daylights out of me had "Shanghai" been a more straight-ahead action flick.
The trademark of any Jackie Chan movie comes in his high-energy martial arts acrobatics, combined with his usual humorous flair. And as usual, Chan did not disappoint on either end. Chan is the Dick Clark of martial arts movies; the man must be 105 years old by now (I remember watching him in CANNONBALL RUN when I was a wee pup myself--and he looked about the same age even then), but watching him fly around on-screen, doing all his own fighting and stunts, you'd swear that he was still a young thing. It is nothing less than amazing to me, and I could watch his movies without the sound on as long as he could keep his tremendous kicks (puts Chuck Norris to shame, I tell ya) and punches going. And I defy you to find anything cuter than Jackie Chan getting silly after puffing on a peace pipe ("Could be worse; at least he's not White"...man, they kept me rollin').
Equally enjoyable, in a different way, was Owen Wilson as Roy O'Bannon. I couldn't help but to see shades of a young Robert Redford in Wilson, though unlike Redford's Butch Cassidy, Roy was a lot more personable and a lot less misogynic. "Sincere and charming" describes his character best; never sarcastic or winking at the audience, you'd be hard-pressed to see Roy as a true bad guy, even when he opens mouth, inserts foot.
But it was the interplay between Roy and Chon (and of course, between Chan and Wilson), that most impressed me. The "Chinese Drinking Game" they played had me in stitches, as did their early fight scene together (which reminds me: don't believe everything you see in the trailer for this flick. You'll see what I mean). I'd dearly love to see these two actors expand on their great chemistry; who knows--maybe they could be the next Paul Newman And Robert Redford buddy team.
The beauty of SHANGHAI NOON, though, is that it doesn't just rely on the two leads to progress its story. Lucy Liu's Princess is no shrinking violet; as headstrong as she is beautiful, it was quite heartening to see that she had some fight in her, and she didn't just sit back and let herself get Rescued like a damsel in distress. And though Roger Yuan didn't really distinguish himself in what could've been a plum role as bad guy Lo Fong, the same cannot be said of Xander Berkeley; the fun he must've had in playing the Marshall in his dueling scenes with Roy, was evident during his performance. It's just too bad that he wasn't given more on-screen time.
A couple or three bits didn't work all that well. I never did get what Wallace's deal was all about; he seemed to be one bad guy too many. Maybe I blinked and missed it--or maybe the meat of their parts were left on the editor's cutting floor--but where were the three Imperial Guards hanging out over the course of the movie? And though the tribal chief's daughter was apparently a throwback to similar female characters in past Westerns, I rolled my eyes at how her story played out in the end. Fortunately, these were minor missteps, and they had a negligible effect on my enjoyment of the movie.
Usually, thoughts of movie remakes and part-twos, give me the hives; but I didn't get enough of SHANGHAI NOON. I want more. If approached well--and if Jackie Chan can hold up (and he shows no signs of slowing), I could groove on SHANGHAI NOON II: DESTRY RIDES AGAIN.
The "Black Factor" [ObDisclaimer: We Are Not A Monolith] I hesitated on addressing the Black Factor--or more precisely, the "Minority Factor"--in this review; after all, Chan & company took such a whimsical look at the lives of Chinese and Native Americans in the wild wild west of yore ("I don't know why they call me the 'Shanghai Kid'; I'm not from Shanghai!") that it seems almost wrong to deal with those issues on a more serious basis. Still, I've not been one to back down from examining prejudices - Hollywood's, as well as my own.
The lighthearted approach used in dealing with the issues of race in this movie didn't mean that it was glossed-over; it was just treated subtlety, and in my opinion, worked all the better for that subtle treatment. Only once did my BS meter go off (Blacks would be welcome in a saloon in the 1800s, but not Chinese?), and only once was bigotry specifically, directly addressed. The treatment felt right, though issues of Chon's assimilation into western culture (in a "when in Rome" fashion) left me vaguely ill-at-ease.
But more disturbing to me, on a personal level, was my own prejudicial reaction to this movie--in a roundabout way, most of which had little to do with "Shanghai", and more to do with Chan's recent hit movie, RUSH HOUR, co-starring Chris Tucker (which I didn't watch for the longest time because I, frankly, didn't feel like seeing Tucker play the sidekick as court-jester).
The Diva broached this issue in her review of Held Up when she said, "Why is okay for me to spend my money watching a stupid Adam Sandler movie, but not okay for me to watch 'Booty Call'?"; and it made me stop and wonder the same about my own pre-judging of the role of the Black Sidekick--like Tucker in "Rush", vs the White Sidekick--like Wilson in "Shanghai". The self-examination left me somewhat disconcerted; I had to ask myself if there's really a difference in how the characters are written and/or played by their respective actors, and more to the point, whether the difference is an actual, tangible thing, or merely my perception.
I haven't quite decided yet. My heart wants to say that a Tucker, or a Danny Glover, or a [insert Black Actor as Sidekick name here] is written or directed differently than would be a Wilson, or a Gene Wilder, or a [insert White Actor as Sidekick name here]. But my head tells me that even where there is fault in the writing or direction, there is probably also duplicity on the actor's part. And maybe a bit of some on mine.
Bammer's Bottom Line: Forget MISSION: IMPLAUSIBLE TOO; spend your movie duckets next week on SHANGHAI NOON. It's the funniest movie I've seen all year; Owen Wilson is a silly charmer, and Jackie Chan is still one baaad mofo. And don't forget: as with most Jackie Chan movies, do not leave before you see the outtakes.
SHANGHAI NOON (rating: greenlight): GLADIATOR brought the roar into the summer movie season, but SHANGHAI NOON adds the fun.
Rose "Bams" Cooper /~\ Webchick and Co-Editor, /','\ 3BlackChicks Review /','`'\ Movie Reviews With Flava! /',',','/`, Copyright Rose Cooper, 2000 `~-._'c / EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com `\ ( http://www.3blackchicks.com/ /====\
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