Review

'The Medallion' is no medal winner

Any Jackie Chan is good Jackie Chan to fans of the Hong Kong action actor, if the crowd on hand for a packed screening of The Medallion is any indication.

Chan, known for doing many of his stunts and for his infectious style of physical comedy, is a little bit martial-arts superhero, a little bit mystically resurrected divinity in his latest vehicle, a haphazardly assembled comic thriller that suffers compared with his more inspired movies.

The star, likable but slower-paced than in the past, works best when paired with a capable partner, i.e., Owen Wilson in the surprisingly entertaining Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, and Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies. As Hong Kong police detective Eddie Yang in The Medallion, Chan is stuck with British comic actor Lee Evans (There's Something About Mary) as Arthur Watson, an Interpol agent. It's far from a classic screen pairing.

It's difficult to recall another recent movie with as much slapstick and as few laughs as this one. Watson, who owes a thing or two to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, is almost always fumbling and bumbling, pointing his gun at statues and other inanimate objects, bumping his head, failing to capture the bad guys and generally spending his screen time getting flustered and overexcited. Precious little of the overeager mugging is funny, with the possible exception of what's in the outtakes at the end (a staple of Chan movies).

The medallion, which bestows more power on Yang than the suit did on Chan's character in last year's The Tuxedo, is being held by a boy in a Buddhist temple, where he sits on pillows, surrounded by dozens of candles. It's one of the most appealing images captured by Hong Kong director Gordon Chan. The child is pursued by a villain who wants the medallion for evil purposes, such as ruling the world. Snakehead (Julian Sands, going through the motions), the designated villain, deserves points for style and imagination: He and his henchmen hole up in a castle on the green cliffs of Ireland, with an interior full of wildly twisting stairs straight out of Escher.

Yang, through a series of incidents too convoluted to recount, is brought back to life with the help of the medallion, which emits streaming, intensely bright rays of light when it's magically activated. Just like that, the hard-working cop is given a new set of abilities particularly helpful in his work as a crime fighter. He's able to leap apartment buildings in a single bound, take bullets with the greatest of ease (wounds are instantly healed), fall from great heights with no discernible aftereffects, fly about a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and help an old/new girlfriend (Claire Forlani, offering sexy smiles, looks of bemusement and little else) with her mortality problem. Death in The Medallion is merely a prelude to a dramatic resurrection.

Chan's moves aren't nearly as zippy, amusing or death-defying as they were in the old days, and laugh-out-loud moments in The Medallion are few and far between. Think of the movie as a release that might have gone straight to video were it not for the marketing potential of a theatrical run. Too bad the filmmakers didn't take advantage of the medallion's mystical powers.

Grade: C-

Director: Gordon Chan

Cast: Jackie Chan, Julian Sands, Claire Forlani, Lee Evans

Screenplay: Bennett Joshua Davlin, Alfred Cheung, Bey Logan, Paul Wheeler

Rating: PG-13; violence

Running time: 88 minutes