Jackie Chan‘s latest movie The Foreigner has been given a cold reception by critics.
The Foreigner sees the Hong Kong movie veteran star alongside Pierce Brosnan, who plays Liam Hennessy – a former IRA man turned politician. Chan’s character, Quan, is on a vengeance mission after his daughter is killed in a London bomb. Believing that Hennessy knows the men behind the bomb, Quan begins to hunt down him down.
Chan himself had previously warned fans that his new film was “not like Rush Hour” with director Martin Campbell saying that his role is a departure from his usual kung-fu comedies.
“It’s a very unique role for him, not what you’d expect of Jackie Chan,” the director said. “He’s playing a dead-straight role, a very quiet, determined old man with a singular focus of tracking down whoever killed his daughter.”
The action packed political thriller certainly seemed like it had potential. However, it seems that the majority of critics aren’t sold on Chan’s latest film.
Common Sense Media gave the film 2/5 in its review, describing it as “lacklustre”. Robert Ebert awarded the film 1/5 wrote that The Foreigner is a “turgid revenge thriller” and an “all-around lousy movie” that “should be swiftly crossed off his bucket list, and never revisited.”
It also seems that former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan couldn’t help Chan out either. Indie Wire described Chan’s pairing with Brosnan as “very awkward” adding that it was “like someone closed their eyes, grabbed two random DVDs off of a bargain rack, and edited them into an almost-coherent thriller.”
Chan’s departure away from his usual action-stunt-style was not welcomed by The New York Times. “Mr. Chan is in his early 60s, and he doesn’t deliver the action pizazz here that he used to,” The Times reported. “Nor, frankly, does he summon enough gravitas to be persuasive in the role of a grief-maddened father.”
Consequence of Sound’s review surprisingly condemned the film for not having enough on-screen time for Chan. “What’s most surprising – and perhaps disappointing – about The Foreigner is that Chan simply doesn’t appear in all that much of it,” wrote COS, “Not long after Quan starts his mighty quest in earnest, he simply disappears into the woods.”
CNN ran with the headline “Jackie Chan can’t beat life into ‘The Foreigner'” for their review, adding that the film “is as generic and disposable as its title, hobbling Jackie Chan’s inherent likability by turning him into a grief-stricken revenge machine.”
However, not all reviews were too critical of Chan’s new film. The Foreigner scored 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 78% audience score. Although IGN said audiences would “have already forgotten about it by the time [they] get home from seeing it”, it gave the film 7/10 and said it “succeeds at what it sets out to do”.
The most encouraging review was written by Rolling Stone, which wrote that “The Foreigner still proves Jackie Chan is still the man”, giving the film 3/4. The publication concluded “Campbell keeps the action cooking and the suspense on a high burner in this compulsively watchable conspiracy thriller”.
