LogFAQs > #957152300

Karo: When Princess Peepee is captured from the forbidden city, a dutiful everyman imperial guard who wants no trouble comes to the wild west looking for her and kung-fus everyone.
It is a mediocre Jackie Chan movie set in the old west. That is what it is. There is not really much else to say, it is pretty by the book for Chan's movies and if all you care about is seeing him beat people up with improvised weapons in silly situations you won't be disappointed.

CoolCly: Jackie Chan is a master of using the environment as a participant in a fight scene, and its on display here. The horsehoe flail he makes is a great combat scene, I love to see it. The fight with the Imperial Guard with the various weapons was good too.

The wife is MEGA underwritten. If they wanted to have her play such key roles in the plot and rescue them then they should actually give her a personality and include her in scenes? That's really bad. But I guess thats better than the sex object dummy of a female character they had in WIld Wild West. But it's ESPECIALLY messed up that they force a romance between Jackie Chan and the princess after everything this wife does for him, and then pass her off to Owen Wilson in the end.

I feel like they intended for Jackie Chan to be a common Imperial soldier and not one of the best of the best, and for Owen Wilson to be a common bandit and not a great gunslinger. But I feel like they went too far in making Owen Wilson seem incompetent and let Jackie Chan be too good at fighting for either of those to be true.

There's some annoying bad hollywood movie tropes that are brought in. Particularly when John meets the princess and exposes her because of his dumb behaviour. It just doesn't make sense to write characters this dumb. His "duty to bring her home" wouldn't outweigh his ability have any sense of his surroundings whatsoever..

6/10

Johnbobb: "This is a mid-tier 2000s comedy with top-tier fight choreography. Seriously, this movie is NOTHING without Jackie Chan, with uninspired music choices (looking at you Kid Rock), bad jokes (as soon as I heard the princess was named Pei-Pei I KNEW it was only so they could make a peepee joke, which, of course, they did) and Owen Wilson being Owen Wilson. This is the debut of director Tom Dey, who used the success from this to make 3 garbage movies and an awful tv show based on a movie much, MUCH better than anything he's capable of doing. And he's got another movie in the works? Who keeps hiring this guy? In the hands of someone better this goes from a cheesy, kinda dumb, kinda fun physical comedy to an instant classic.

Side note: I always forget how fucking cute Lucy Liu is, goddamn."

Inviso: Honestly, this one ranks as high as it does for me almost entirely on the fact that Jackie Chan is just one of the most lovable action movie stars imaginable. And I pray that nothing comes out about him in the future that will make this write-up look REALLY bad in retrospect. His naivete makes him a good fish-out-of-water in almost any setting, and it definitely works well here, because hes just so earnest and honorable that he helps sell the straight edge/scumbag buddy cop dynamic. That being said, Owen Wilson kinda sucks in this, and the plot is rather generic and uninspired, largely capitalizing on a weirdly-immature sense of humor (see: the drinking game bathtub scene, or the peace pipe scene). So really, its not a great movie, but Jackie Chan is always great, and the addition of kung fu fight scenes salvage SOMETHING watchable from this.

KBM: This one is a frustrating one for me, in that it could have been so much better than it ended up being. As a Jackie Chan action movie, this is great. You basically can't go wrong with Jackie Chan doing martial arts, and that stuff is all well-shot and executed here. He's also got some pleasantly surprising chemistry with Owen Wilson, and Xander Berkeley (one of my favorite underappreciated character actors) is a lot of fun as the evil Marshal. The problem, though, comes whenever the Disney factor starts creeping in. The comedy is super cheesy and forced, and I was rolling my eyes through most of these scenes just waiting for more of the action stuff to kick in, wishing they had just gone for a more hard-edged action movie with the same plot but without the lame (and occasionally mildly-offensive) attempts at humor.

Poke: This film had no business actually making me enjoy it a bit. Its silly, but its got Owen Wilson, who is always disarmingly charming and Jackie Chans stunts are a treat.
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Bear Bro
The Empire of Silence