Aging action stars face off at the box office
Two action idols of the 1990s — Jackie Chan and Nicolas Cage — are back with respective action movies this week. And sadly, these movies aren’t good enough to review separately, so let’s take a look at them together.
Before we do, though, let’s acknowledge that which Chan and Cage have in common: They’re both outsize talents who can do more than action. Chan is the closest thing to Buster Keaton that the world has seen since Buster Keaton. He’s physically amazing, and a total delight. And Cage, who won an Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas,” is so idiosyncratic and brilliant that he always seems to be slumming when he makes an action movie even though he’s been specializing in that genre for the past quarter century.
This week, they’re back with movies that are heavy on martial arts. To start with the bad news, Cage’s latest film, “Jiu Jitsu,” must represent his career worst — and keep in mind, this is the man
who made 1989’ s “Vampire’s Kiss,” in which he ate a cockroach.
Directed by Dimitri Logothetis (“Kickboxer: Retaliation”), “Jiu Jitsu” is being talked up as the beginning of a new martial arts franchise. Sure, it is. Expect to see the next installment around the same time as “The Last Airbender 2.”
Cage, who can be seen on the movie’s poster, only has a supporting role, at best. He doesn’t show up until 40 minutes in, and thereafter he appears only briefly and sporadically. The real star is cinematic legend Alain Moussi ( the star of “Kickboxer: Retaliation,” of course!) as Jake, a wellbuilt fellow who starts the film having no memory of his previous life.
Turns out, he doesn’t remember what he’d rather forget: He is being pursued by a cruel, singleminded, allpowerful alien from another planet, one who has traveled across the galaxy just to kill him with ... wait for it ... jiujitsu! Yes, “Jiu Jitsu” is a combination space alien/ martial arts movie, made presumably in the hope that it would attract lovers of both genres.
Maybe it will. Or maybe the audience for this will be like a Venn diagram, where the only people who want to see “Jiu Jitsu” are people who like both martial arts and space alien movies. We’re talking about a rarefied audience. Y’know, people who want to put the “Mars” back in martial.
In any case, the first 40 minutes are almost nothing but fighting, for no reason we can discern. Then Cage shows up to explain the plot. Seeing Cage here provides a mix of feelings. He’s so loose, so sly and so much of a relief from the awfulness of his surroundings that it’s comforting to see him. But what is he doing here? I mean, it’s his talent; it belongs to him, and he can do what he wants with it, but come on. No seriously, come on. The Chan movie, “Vanguard,” is better. It’s a Chineselanguage film, directed by Stanley Tong, who directed two of
Chan’s later Hong Kong films, “Supercop” ( 1992) and “Supercop 2” ( 1993).
Chan, at 66, is no longer doing dangerous stunts. Here he plays the sedate head of a private security company. The movie plays off of Chan’s mild, olderguy manner so that, when he does get into martial arts brawls, it has some of the ohnoyougotDadangry quality that we find in Liam Neeson movies.
The opening is dazzling. An accountant and his wife are captured by an organized crime syndicate and have to be rescued by Chan’s security company. But for the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’ 90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment, and if it encourages people to check out the films of Chan’s Chinese prime, that would be a good thing.
The thing is, Jackie Chan is famous throughout the world, but he’s not famous in the United States for his best movies. It’s as if Buster Keaton were famous for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” ( 1966). As with Keaton, Chan’s best work could only have been done by a nimble, fearless and somewhat crazy young man, and you can find that crazy young Chan only in his Hong Kong movies.