Skiptrace begins nine years ago, with Hong Kong cop Bennie Chan (Jackie Chan) witnessing the death of his partner at the hands of a mysterious criminal know as The Matador. In present day, Bennie tracks down American con man Connor Watts (Johnny Knoxville) in order to help out his goddaughter Samantha (Fan Bingbing), who may have gotten in trouble with the Matador. It turns out that Connor may hold the key to finally unmasking the Matador. But Connor isn’t very cooperative, and the two end up having to trek across Mongolia and rural China to Hong Kong, matching wits all along the way.
We haven’t had a Jackie Chan film like this in quite a while. Even his big Hollywood efforts, which actively tried to capture some of the magic of his most memorable films, were kind of handcuffed to particular Western sensibilities. Skiptrace is the closest we’ve got to a really goofy 80s Jackie Chan movie. The plot doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The film is prone to strange diversions, like a Mongolian village breaking out into a pop song. It’s almost painfully earnest at times. In short, it’s a blast from a past, and just a whole lot of fun.
When it comes down to it, the story of a real Jackie Chan film barely matters. What matters more is the momentum, the feeling that the film is just leading us from ridiculous situation after another, each one involving a minor crisis that Chan has to fight his way out of. And this film delivers on that. It quickly lays out the rather ridiculous elements of the plot, and then mostly forgets about it as it sends its mismatched leads on a journey through some truly remarkable places. They fight in a factory that manufactures matryoshka dolls, jump off a train, cross the gobi desert, go whitewater rafting on a makeshift raft, zipline off a cliff, attend a mud festival, encounter a wedding banquet, and get into all sorts of other trouble.
And that’s all you really need. Jackie Chan may have lost a step or two in his older age, but he’s still one of the best around when it comes to crafting funny and exciting action set pieces. The action isn’t as crisp as the movies he made in his prime, the editing and the VFX clearly helping a little more than usual. But this film still features plenty of inventive and hilarious fighting. An early scene involving a ceramic Matryoshka doll is as classic a Jackie Chan bit as one can imagine. Throughout the whole, Chan’s Keatonesque sensibilities manage to shine through.
And he finds a pretty good partner in Johnny Knoxville, who is in a weird way a spiritual successor to Chan. Like Chan, Knoxville built his name on a willingness to put himself in dangerous situations for the sake of entertainment. And he fits in wonderfully in the Chan cinematic milieu, falling over more than once in pretty delightful ways. Director Renny Harlin isn’t the first person you’d think of to direct a Jackie Chan movie, but his somewhat dated sensibilities work perfectly for this film.
At best, Skiptrace is recapturing just a shade of the glory of Chan films like Project A or Armour of God. But even just a sliver of that greatness ends up being pretty entertaining. This film might come off as old-fashioned to some, and those people would not be wrong. But Skiptrace is pure fun, in the way that only Jackie Chan can really bring.
My Rating:
