The Medallion

These days Jackie Chan has two ways of keeping his films fresh. Either he fixes on a foreign city as an exotic location, or he shares screen honours with a comic sidekick. Here Jackie is a Hong Kong cop trailing one of those magical 'golden child' types to, wait for it, Dublin, where he's teamed with Interpol's doughty Arthur Watson, more familiar to you and me as, you guessed it, Lee Evans. Even as a fan, I have to say this is desperate stuff. Jackie has one not bad chase sequence through cobbled streets, but Gordon Chan's direction is so stilted it looks like a parody of those cheesy '70s kung fu quickies. Evans' comic schtick is beyond unfunny; poor Forlani is saddled with the love disinterest. Worse, halfway through the movie Jackie is resurrected from a watery grave with special powers. The special effects aren't bad, but these run counter to the star's appeal, which is essentially acrobatic, gymnastic and physical. A raft of writers (including HK movie expert Bey Logan) take credit for a script which scarcely begins to make sense - though presumably that incoherence might not be unconnected to the 27 minutes Columbia cut from the release print. Not that you would want it any longer. Even the end-credit out-takes suck.