Jackie Chan's The Myth

Indi-"Chan"-a Jones style martial arts film
How could I resist the baaad pun? "Myth" is actually a renamed Chinese film from 2005 called "San Wa."

Briefly, Jack (Chan) is an archaeologist who dreams of a past life as a General (Meng Yi) in Ancient China.

When he's asked by a colleague, William (Tony Leung Ka Fai) to help find a scientfic discovery relating to defying gravity, Jack returns to China and faces his dream princess Ok-soo (Hee-seon Kim) and his own past failure as the General to protect her.

The story's a bit of Indiana Jones and a bit of the fallen Samurai myth. I very rarely watch subtitled films, but "Myth" was easy enough to follow and provided enough amusement to make the rental worthwhile.

One my favorite Jackie Chen films
I really enjoyed this film and so did my kids. I heard about this film through a friend of mine and I must say that I was pleasantly suprised. The acting was pretty good and so were the action scenes. I would love to have seen this movie at the theaters.

One of Jackie Chan's better recent efforts
The Myth initially feels like Jackie Chan is reinventing his Armour of God movies just as he recently reinvented the Police Story series, with a slightly darker tone. The film's two plot strands aren't always as complimentary as they could be, with the historical backstory of Chan's general falling in love with the Emperor's latest concubine far more interesting than the modern-day adventurer Chan's efforts to uncover their secret. It's not always successful, not least because of some poorly timed CGI, but it does offer an enjoyable fight on a glue factory assembly line that plays out like a demented version of twister and a spectacular battle scene (Stanley Tong is clearly a fan of Anthony Mann, copying several set-ups from The Fall of the Roman Empire) en route to the finale. And the last half hour is impressive stuff, be it a surprisingly bloody (for Chan) one-against-all battle that sees him fighting atop a mountain of corpses or the scenes in a giant weightless mausoleum that...

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