This movie is available from www.amazon.com

Rating:

7.25

AKA: Around the World in Eighty Days

Year of release: 2004

Genre: action/comedy

Director: Frank Coraci

Action director: Jackie Chan

Producers: Willie Chan, Solon So, Jackie Chan, Alex Schwartz, Phyllis Alia

Stars: Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cecile De France, Ewan Bremmer, Jim Broadbent, Karen Mok, Daniel Wu, Sammo Hung, Maggie Q, Kathy Bates, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rob Schneider

Rated PG for mild violence

DVD Information

Company: Disney

Format: widescreen (also available in full-frame)

Languages: English, French, Spanish

Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Extras: alternate beginning, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurette, Jackie Chan featurette, music video, trailers, director commentary

Notes: This DVD is a bit over-priced, but the transfer is excellent and there's a good amount of extras.

Related links:

Jackie Chan biography
Sammo Hung biography
Movie Review index
Main Page

Images courtesy of Yahoo! Movies

Around the World in 80 Days

Around the World in 80 Days just kind of came and went at the US box office. I guess a lot of people saw this as a "kiddie" movie and decided to skip it -- this reviewer included. That's kind of a shame, because it's the best film Jackie Chan has done since 2001's The Accidental Spy. That might not be saying too much after craptacular efforts like The Tuxedo, but Around the World in 80 Days is a fun movie that has some good action sequences in it. Oh, you're not going to think this is the second coming of Christ or anything like that, but the film is surprisingly entertaining and worth looking at for any Jackie Chan fan.

The movie is a loose re-working of Jules Verne's novel, with Chan playing a Chinese man who steals a valuable jade Buddha from the Bank of England so he can return it to the village it was taken from. While on the run from the police, he meets an eccentric inventor (Steve Coogan), who has bet his fellow scientists that he can travel around the world in (you guessed it) eighty days. Chan sees this as the quickest way of getting back to China, and so he joins up with the inventor and starts out on the journey, while trying to keep a corrupt cop (Ewan Bremmer) and an evil general (Karen Mok) from taking back the Buddha.

Maybe I was just in the right kind of mood, but I really enjoyed this movie. It's really funny in parts -- Arnold Schwarzenegger's small role as a drunken Turkish prince is hilarious -- and the action is solid. Thankfully, it looks like the film-makers let Jackie take control of the fighting and stunts, and the results are so refreshing compared to his recent overly-CGI'ed stuff like in The Medallion. Even though there is some obvious wire-work in parts, there are several sequences which harken back to Chan's glory days, most notably a fight where he uses a bench as a weapon ala Drunken Master. And it's always cool to see Sammo Hung (who pops in briefly as Wong Fei-Hung) and Jackie onscreen together. For Hong Kong movie fans, there are a few appearances from other HK stars as well, like Daniel Wu, who actually looks very good in his fight against Jackie.

Even though this is clearly an American film, it has a lot of HK flavor to it. In some ways, Around the World in 80 Days reminded me of some of Chan's classic works like Project A. Even though it's ultimately nowhere the level of that movie, at least this picture felt like the first US production that Jackie Chan has been involved in where it didn't seem like he was thrown in just as a marketing gimmick. I will grant that Around the World in 80 Days is ultimately a "kid's movie" (the film barely earns its' PG rating), but it is a picture that I think even very jaded action buffs will enjoy, even though there's no showers of blood, dead bodies, gratuitous drug use, creative uses of profanity, or bare breasts displayed during the entire running time.