THE MEDALLION
Hong Kong/USA, 2003, 89 minutes, Colour.
Jackie Chan, Lee Evans, Clare Forlani, Julian Sands, John Rhys- Davies.
Directed by Gordon Chan Ka- Seung.
This is one of those easy come, easy go Jackie Chan vehicles. It is action combined with hocus pocus mysticism. In case you hadn't noticed, there is Irish money in the film so, after the initial Hong Kong sequences, we are off to Ireland and the Interpol office there. Hong Kong, Dublin and a castle on the Irish coast make for unusual settings.
The plot is a mixum-gatherum of police investigations and rivalries, especially between Lee Evans (who is not particularly funny) and Jackie Chan (who has the knack of being unselfconsciously comic). There are a ragbag of crooks under the thumb of archvillain Julian Sands who has the usual villain's desire for power and immortality and is unscrupulous in pursuing the marvellous medallion even though it endangers the life of a gifted child. And so on, until his timely and special effects death and disappearance. There is a bit of love interest in the background with Jackie's neglect of a girl friend he worked with in Hong Kong.
Not major league Chan.
1. A Jackie Chan action film? Comic touches? Lee Evans bringing English comic humour?
2. The Hong Kong locations, the contrast with Dublin, the Irish castle and coast? The musical score?
3. The title, the focus on the medallion itself, on the special child and the magical powers? The power to raise from the dead? Supernatural abilities? Snakehead and his wanting the medallion? The fight, Eddie and his raising people from the dead, bringing the parts of the medallion together? The destruction of the villain?
4. Snakehead, the Hong Kong contacts, the boat, the mysterious child, the abduction, keeping him on the boat? Eddie and Arthur and the detection work, the boat, the smuggling? Their losing the child?
5. The transition to Dublin, Eddie and the interviews with Hammerstock-Smythe? His meeting Arthur? Their clashes? Eddie and his personality, genial, the meeting with Nicole, her being hurt by the separation and his not communicating? Their working together? Arthur and his Chinese wife - and her abilities in martial arts?
6. The child's arrival in Ireland, the criminals looking after the child? The castle? Snakehead and his wanting the medallion?
7. The personality of Snakehead, the sneering and suave English villain? Power-hungry? Allowing himself to be killed? Rising from the dead? The confrontation with Eddie? The medallion, the child, his destruction?
8. Arthur and Nicole dying, Eddie raising them with the medallion? Arthur's wife and her beating off the assailants? The confrontation in the castle, the struggle with the magic powers? Eddie flying away with Nicole at the end?
9. An average entertainment, far-fetched? Jackie Chan and his powers - and not needing, necessarily, a magic medallion to enhance his powers?
