Better than expected

Went and caught this tonight. It's been seven years since Jackie Chan was in a major English-language film so I figured I'd give it a look.

I went into it with low expectations and ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. I expected it to just be a pure action movie with a simple and predictable plot. However, while there is a fair amount of action, it's actually just as much of a political thriller as it is an action film.

Old Man Chan does a pretty good job, but don't expect a ton of fist fighting. There are a couple of hand-to-hand scenes but most of the film he is doing shit like setting off homemade bombs and catching people in booby traps.

The real show-stealer here is Pierce Brosnan. He does a hell of a job as an ex-IRA-leader-turned-politician who still has ties to his former organization. Brosnan has seemed pretty far away from the spotlight for several years now so it was good to see him on the big screen again.

The director here is Martin Campbell. If the name doesn't jump out to you, he also made movies like Casino Royale, GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro and the underrated stupid-fun Vertical Limit.

My one major complaint is that the story is convoluted. There are a lot of twists and turns and a lot of double-crossing going on and it gets a little out of control the more the story develops. This is probably a film you'd need to watch at least twice to really understand all the plot details.

All in all though, I enjoyed it. The story, while a bit too complicated, is at least more ambitious than the typical action fare, Brosnan gives an awesome performance, and it's fun to see an aged Jackie Chan whoop some ass.

7/10.