I don’t think I’ve legitimately liked a Jackie Chan movie since 2004’s New Police Story. There were good scenes and flashes of brilliance in Rob-B-Hood, The Forbidden Kingdom, and Chinese Zodiac, but they never really hung together as movies.
Regardless, Jackie Chan is back, and his latest movie is Kung-Fu Yoga. The film reteams Chan with Stanley Tong, who also directed some of Chan’s standout work in the 1990s: Rumble in the Bronx, Police Story III: Supercop, and Police Story IV: First Strike.
If anything, the movie has Jackie Chan in a car with a CGI lion named Little Jackie. Seriously, give it a watch.
While Kung-Fu Yoga doesn’t look good, it does seem like a throwback to the bizarre Hong Kong fare of the 80s, where random stuff happened and then there’s a cool fight. There’s also a little vibe of 2005’s The Myth (also directed by Tong), a Jackie Chan movie that almost worked but just loses the thread in its last third.
Here’s a synopsis for Kung-Fu Yoga:
Chinese archeology professor Jack (Jackie Chan) teams up with beautiful Indian professor Ashmita and assistant Kyra to locate lost Magadha treasure. In a Tibetan ice cave, they find the remains of the royal army that had vanished together with the treasure, only to be ambushed by Randall (Sonu Sood), the descendent of a rebel army leader. When they free themselves, their next stop is Dubai where a diamond from the ice cave is to be auctioned. After a series of double-crosses and revelations about their past, Jack and his team travel to a mountain temple in India, using the diamond as a key to unlock the real treasure.
Kung-Fu Yoga opens in Singapore on January 26th and in China on January 28th. No word yet on an international release.
[via Screen Anarchy]
