SHANGHAI NOON
A very funny East-meets-Western romp about a Chinese imperial guard who partners up with a laid-back outlaw to rescue a kidnapped princess. It provides a sparkling showcase for Jackie Chan’s genius for physical comedy and a breakout role for Owen Wilson.Running time: 110 minutes. Rated PG-13. At the 42nd Street E Walk, the Union Square, the Lincoln Square, others.
A sure-fire summer crowd-pleaser, and the most enjoyable western comedy since “Blazing Saddles,” “Shanghai Noon” is a cheerful, good-hearted delight.
First-time director Tom Dey deftly mixes Jackie Chan’s Buster Keaton-inspired genius for physical comedy with Owen Wilson’s talent for the deadpan one-liner, to fashion a fast, smart, very funny buddy flick.
It obviously helps that the two stars have such sparkling chemistry, but they are also working from an uncommonly smart, dryly irreverent script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar.
The movie starts in Peking’s Forbidden City in 1881. The beautiful Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu of “Ally McBeal”) is about to be married off to the fat, toadlike, 12-year-old emperor.
With the help of her English tutor (Jason Connery) she runs off to America, only to be delivered to an evil Chinese traitor (Roger Yuan) who has become a mining magnate using Chinese labor, and who threatens to kill her unless the imperial court pays a massive ransom.
A crack team of imperial guards is dispatched to Carson City, Nev., with a chest full of gold to ransom the princess. Accompanying them only because his uncle is the official interpreter is Chan, as the bumbling imperial guard Chon Wang – pronounced “John Wayne.”
The train on which they’re traveling to Carson City is robbed by an outlaw gang led by the ultra-laid-back gangster Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson), who’s really only in the crime game to impress the girls. Because one of his new gang-members is a psychopath who doesn’t get O’Bannon’s rules of nonviolent train robbery, the heist goes badly wrong.
Chon’s uncle is killed, and Chon and O’Bannon find themselves alone and at each other’s throats in the desert.
Of course, after various misadventures and brawls, and an episode in which Chon is adopted by a party of Sioux warriors, he and the feckless O’Bannon end up working together to rescue the princess.
Jackie Chan’s English is now good enough to showcase the charm and charisma the star has to spare. One of his funniest moments – a drinking scene with Wilson in a bordello bathroom – doesn’t even involve any stunts.
There are times, in fact, when you almost wish that the movie took more time to show off his amazing acrobatic abilities (Chan choreographs and performs his own stunts).
Despite all the hilariously anachronistic dialogue, the filmmakers take care to respect the plot and visual conventions of the western.
They deal lightly with issues of race and culture without any of the politically correct point-scoring so common in revisionist westerns. It’s also a very well-photographed film that makes the most of some stunning Alberta, Canada, locations.
The lovely Native American model Brandon Merrill plays Falling Leaves, Chon Wang’s Sioux wife.