re:mote voices

Title: The Medallion
Cast: Jackie Chan, Lee Evans, Claire Forlani, Julian Sands, John Rhys-Davies, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Christy Chung
Director: Gordon Chan

the medallion is the latest outing by jackie chan, and one that isn't that different from some of his recent productions. in particular the medallion has some parallels with the tuxedo - rather than an enhancing suit jackie gains abilities from the "holy grail of the east", and instead of jennifer "luv" hewitt giving it her all as handy sidekick/love interest we have brit babe claire forliani (meet joe black, the mystery men). the cast is rounded out by brit comedian lee evans, who compliments chan with his own form of prat falls, and as soon as we see the name julian sands go up at the start we have already worked out who the villain of the piece is. like so many of chan's films he is a hong kong police officer, who is involved in big jobs, only to see those jobs require him to go abroad. in this case it is a joint operation with interpol and that requires him to end up in ireland. on the whole the medallion is jackie chan by numbers, only speeded up in some cases. with that there are parts of this film which are really bad, squirmingly awful even. but with that, or perhaps because of that (?), there are parts where we find that we are laughing quite a lot. the medallion is what it is, and in some cases people will hate that, and in some cases they won't. you probably know which case you fit into already, so you've been warned. or something.