REVIEW: Bleeding Steel

This is the latest Jackie Chan adventure-comedy, and unlike his other 2017 films, The Foreigner and Kung Fu Yoga, it is an entirely Chinese production (that should be your first cause for worry -- remember the failures CZ12 and Dragon Blade?).  This time Chan is directed by the inexperienced egotist, Leo Zhang, and it is the weirdest Chan action film yet.  Firstly, it is trash.  It is again silly comedy coupled with Chan's brand of slapstick action, but this time it is infused with a futuristic, science-fiction plot.  It is a shame, because the first action sequence (which is oddly sandwiched between the title of the film and the opening credits) is decent, and it showed promise with its choreography and gore.  I would have been up for more of that.  However, it capitulates into stupidity soon after as it focuses on Nancy (Ouyang Nana), who is Chan's daughter that has regenerative powers, though they've never met (he must keep his distance for a reason which is not convincingly explained).  The story is crap, which could have been forgiven if other elements were not, but needless to say she is being tracked down by an armed cult that has a white-faced leader (solidly played by Callan Mulvey), a lycra-clad hench-woman called "Woman in Black", and black Storm Troopers as foot soldiers.  Ludicrous stuff indeed.  After the opening sequence, the film goes hard for the jokes.  A lunchtime cafeteria girl fight between Nancy and some Aussie women, a slapstick rooftop fight between a gang of Aussie men and Show Luo (acting the fool while imitating Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, har har), and a fight atop the Sydney Opera House between Chan and the "Woman in Black", are examples of the mind-numbingly lame sequences this film has to offer.

It has the usual Chan elements of recent years.  Expertly crafted Chinese propaganda; the Chinese are so very good and so very clever.  The Aussies are so very bad, and so very racist -- literally every non-Chinese person in the film is racist towards Nancy or is out to capture her.  The film seems a bit preoccupied with getting the right angle to show off its sponsor's products.  A bunch of C'estbon bottles here, a Mi phone there, and whole bunch of Audis.  *groan* ... and this film has a weird fetish with cleavage. Not a complaint necessarily, but I wish the nobody director would've cared more on making a great action film than drawing attention to [among other things] the two occasions his name appears on screen (as if he has John Woo level of importance or something -- he doesn't).

Chan is his usual self.  The big star among untalented unknowns - just how he likes it.  Though this time he faces reality and allows his true hair colour (grey) to come through.  Show Luo is unfunny and annoyingly shoehorned in to what otherwise might have been a cheesy action treat.  He also, more than once, refers to Chan as "Jackie" when Chan's character's name is Lin Dong.  If it was intentional then it's just a plain bad creative choice.  Relative newcomer, Ouyang Nana, is beyond beautiful but does not provide much else.  Her line delivery is consistently monotone.  But she is topped by the utterly horrific Erica Xia-hou, whose opening fight scene shows her true lack of talent (watch out for her Razzie-level last breath).

D+