“Shanghai Noon” Starring Jackie Chan, Owen
Wilson and Lucy Liu Directed by Tom Dey
In “Shanghai Noon,” “The Searchers”
meets “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” which meets
Jackie Chan. In other words, here is a summer movie that sloppily,
yet entertainingly and with charm, jam packs everything from the
staid Western to the comedic buddy picture to, well, Jackie Chan.
“Shanghai Noon” proves that sometimes too much of a
good thing is worth considering, especially during the summer.
Headstrong Princess Pei Pei ( Liu) runs away from China’s
Forbidden City to be a free woman in America’s Wild West. She
is soon kidnapped and sent to Nevada City. The emperor sends three
of his most competent guards to find her and pay the ransom of
100,000 pieces of gold. Chon Wang (Chan), the clumsiest imperial
guard in China, is not among them, but is able to tag along with
his uncle as extra help. On a train headed for Nevada City, Chon
Wang meets the foolish, talkative Roy O’Bannon (Wilson), who
leads a band of train robbers. When Chon’s uncle is killed
during the robbery, Chon vows to avenge him and find Princess Pei
Pei himself. Through the aid of quick wits and martial arts, Chon
is able to apprehend the robbers, but gets thrown off the train.
During his long trek to Nevada City, he is befriended by Native
Americans and ultimately meets up with Roy. Soon, they land in
prison together and find that as different as they are, they have a
lot in common as outsiders to the dominant culture of the American
west. Roy, with gold on his mind, allies with Chon and together
they head to Nevada City to find both the gold and the princess.
Along the way, there are crooked sheriffs, psychotic train robbers,
amorous ladies and horses with lots of personality. “Shanghai
Noon” makes great summer entertainment. It’s funny, it
has action and it somehow manages to confront interesting issues
about racial stereotypes and the American myth of the West all at
the same time. The pairing of the simultaneously creepy and
charming Wilson as a kind of surfer boy- meets-snake oil salesman
and the always engaging Chan is the film’s best asset. Wilson
and Chan both exude a kind of naivete that befits a story that uses
a youthful frontier as its backdrop. The gags are funny or at least
cute when Chan attempts them, as in the scenes with the
temperamental Mr. Ed-like horse. And the scenes where Wilson and
Chan perhaps do more than blow bubbles in the bath makes a fun
interpretation of the ambiguous homosexual subtext that always
seems to lurk behind masculine buddy pictures. The most
disappointing aspect of “Shanghai Noon” is its fairly
tame martial arts sequences. No doubt, we can’t expect
“Drunken Master” or the “Supercop”
franchise. But the reason to watch Jackie Chan is for the fighting,
not necessarily so much for the physical comedy minstrelsy he has
been relegated to in America. Although some of the dialogue
(“Cool!”) annoyingly takes us out of the Western
milieu, “Shanghai Noon” does well in its job of
entertaining from all angles. Jun Okada Rating: 7
“Passion of Mind” Starring Demi Moore,
Stellan Skarsgard and William Fichtner Directed by Alain
Berliner
If only to see Demi Moore play both an urban sophisticate and a
rustic matron in a single film, “Passion of Mind” is
worth checking out. In this film, Moore shifts skillfully between
giving steely gazes and motherly smiles, seeming equally
comfortable in designer labels and in ratty overalls. Every night
when a young widow, Marie (Moore), falls asleep in southern France,
she wakes up in bustling New York as Marty, a successful career
woman. When Marty falls asleep, she wakes up in France and resumes
her life as Marie. Marie-Marty knows that one of her lives is real
and that the other must be a dream, but she can’t tell which
is which. This dual life seems to be the answer to the modern
woman’s dilemma. As Marie, she leads a simple life in a small
village as the mother of two young girls. As Marty, she is a classy
and powerful literary agent with men at her feet. But trouble
develops when she falls in love with a different man in each life.
Marie-Marty’s strangely full existence turns into a nightmare
of paranoia and fractured identity. She wants to be faithful to one
man, but she can’t decide which man she loves better and,
more importantly, which man is real. The film’s web of
fantasy traps the audience as well as the characters. As we follow
Marie-Marty shifting between her two lives, there is nothing to
help us gain our bearings. Like our character, we can’t
choose between the charming leading men, passionate William
(Skarsgard) and tender Aaron (Fichtner). While the film succeeds in
creating a seductive and thrilling plot, its representation of the
two different worlds is clumsily superficial. Marty’s life as
a New York literary agent is represented by not much more than a
plaque on her door. And the culture of southern France is conveyed
by Marie’s daughters saying “Merci, monsieur,”
once apiece. There is not the least French aura to the scenes in
France ““ which is a strange feat indeed, considering that it
was filmed on location and that director Berliner is French. The
film neglects to create a rich backdrop because it is really only
interested in the character’s psychological conflict.
Fortunately, the story is engaging enough to excuse some of these
inadequacies. Laura Loh Rating: 7