Shanghai Knights

Shanghai Knights

I've said before that humour will separate people faster than politics. What one finds funny another will think is absolute drivel. What another thinks is pure shit, I might think is comic genius. This is basically my way of admitting that I find Shanghai Noon very funny, a goofy film set in the Wild, Wild West featuring two greatest clichés ever: the first being the buddy odd-couple in Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan, who also provides the other one; the fish-out-of-water, and y'know what? It's the perfect pairing. And plunking an Imperial Chinese soldier in the ye old wild, wild west is a hilariously absurd fish-out-of-water situation (even funnier than the odd couple pairing of Chan and some black guy in Rush Hour which plunks a Chinese man out of his fish bowl and into the ghetto…or something.)

Wannabe cowboy Wilson is at his laconic best here, while the Wild West setting is perfect for Chan's energetic brand of martial art stunts and Buster Keaton-inspired antics, especially when mixed with Wilson 's slacker humour and short fuse comedy. However lightning definitely does not strike twice and the sequel Shanghai Knights is unfortunately really quite lame.

Wilson is still kind of amusing but seems a little bored going over the same comic ground, albeit now set in the grimy David Copperfield London, and the humour is noticeably not as free-flowing or inspired as a result. The idea of sending them to London where they're both fish-out-of-water is pretty transparent (one fish-out-of-water in the first film was funny, two must be hilarious!), but it was a terrible idea to relocate Owen's pathetic cowboy as it takes away all that made him funny in the first place. Also, and this isn't the fault of Shanghai Knights , but any period piece automatically bores me to fucking tears at first glance. Blame the many dreary Jane Austen adaptations going around for that.

I know this next statement goes against most of my criticisms of other films, but there is way too much of a story going on here. From memory the first film was mostly just Chan and Wilson 's buddy antics. I can't even recall what else happened. In Knights there's some crap going on about a secret possibly mystical Chinese seal, murdered fathers being avenged, fly-kicking girls who are wrongly jailed, invention of the machine gun, and the assassination of the entire royal family (which, as this film claims to be nestled somewhere in real history, we already know won't take place). There's just not enough space for Wilson to riff, although it's always a delight watching Chan at work, and he has a few trademark innovative fight sequences, more slapstick than violence, than turn out great, even in a dumbed down safe lawsuit-fearful Hollywood environment that seems to contradict his usual ballsy tenacity for doing mind-blowing dangerous stunts.