Shanghai Knights Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)February 26th, 2003
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Shanghai Knights, the sequel to the surprisingly entertaining Shanghai Noon, suffers from just about every possible symptom of sequelitis. The story, which was ridiculously weak in the original, is even more skeletal here. The stars don't try nearly as hard. The setting has changed, and a couple of new characters have been thrown in, just in case you grow tired of the reheated jokes from the first film. In other words, Knights just can't hold a candle to its predecessor.
The action begins in 1887, where we see a Forbidden City, China break-in involving the theft of The Royal Seal (a diamond kind of thing, not the animal) and the murder of a man we later learn is Chon Wang's father (Kim Chan). We also learn Chon Wang has a sister named Lin (Asian pop star Fann Wong), who chases the British baddie (Aidan Gillen, from the British Queer as Folk) all the way back to London, though apparently stopping at some point to write her big brother and let him know what happened.
Chon Wang (Jackie Chan, The Tuxedo), the sheriff of Carson City, gets the news and hightails it to New York City to either pick up his old buddy Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson, I Spy), or to get his share of the gold they procured during their first adventure (it's pretty unclear). Roy, who is now a waiter/gigolo/book-writer, is vague about what he's done with the loot, but agrees to tag along on Chon Wang's score-settling trip to London, which is being played here by the lovely and talented Czech Republic.
The rest follows a somewhat similar format to Noon: Chop-socky, joke, chop-socky, joke, repeat ad nauseam. Trouble is, most of the jokes don't work here. I think Wilson was responsible for most of his one-liners in the first film, and I'm sad to report that in this, his first "phoned-in" performance (but don't worry, folks - Harrison Ford has been doing it for years, and he's still a big star), the humor misses way more than it hits. It's nowhere near as politically incorrect, the rhythm is practically non-existent, and the chemistry Chan and Wilson shared in Noon has completely vanished.
That said, the action scenes involving Chan are still pretty spectacular. He does a number using a revolving door that is just priceless. But if somebody wanted to see a Jackie Chan film with bad jokes, they'd just watch The Tuxedo, right? And nobody watched that, so why even bother with this film? Knights is another serious misstep from the writing team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who dazzled with Noon and then proved they weren't a fluke by creating the television hit Smallville. In the meantime, however, they've penned Showtime and this sequel, which introduces Jack the Ripper, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a clunky, unfunny fashion. Hopefully this "franchise" will end right here.
1:47 - PG-13 for action violence and sexual content
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