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“Vanguard”
Not rated. In English and Mandarin with subtitles. AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters.
Grade: B.
Jackie Chan’s ninth collaboration with producer-director Stanley Tong (“Supercop”), “Vanguard” is a continent-jumping Chinese production that mixes real stunts with not-so-real CG action scenes. It’s proof that the “Fast & Furious” style, “Fast & Furious” style, over-the-top action scenes have taken hold in the international market (or maybe that’s where they come from), and won’t go away anytime soon. I mean, really, are you ready for airborne SUVs, a good guy with an assault rifle aboard a jet skateboard, bee-shaped drones or – holy “Goldfinger” – solid gold supercars making donuts for the mean streets of Dubai? If you’re wondering how heavy (and how slow) a gold car could be, you’re probably not the target audience of “Vanguard”.
But the film has its pleasures, not least that of watching Chan overshadow two younger (and noticeably taller) actors, who play the agents of the super high-tech security company called Vanguard, of course, which Chan’s Mr Tang owns and operates. I’m married man and new father Kaixuan (physical actor and comedian Lun Ai similar to Jackie Chan) and brave singleton Lei (heartthrob Yang Yang from “Once Upon a Time”), and in the typical opening scenes , they face a band of mercenaries called the Arctic Wolves, who kidnap a businessman and injure her after a flaming gunfire.
There is also a beautiful female Vanguard agent named Mi Ya (model and taekwondo teacher Miya Muqi) .The mercenaries then pursue the conservationist daughter of businessman Fareeda (Ruohan Xu), who is in Africa doing somersaults with a fake CG lion named Charlie. This makes for more jungle chase and shooting scenes, with a jeep-like amphibious vehicle and a chaste romantic interlude with her and Fareeda in an egg-shaped “avian observatory”.
I mean, you can’t make this up. Or you can, if you are writer Tong. What “Vanguard” doesn’t borrow from the “Fast & Furious” series, it does borrow from the James Bond movies, although I have to say that “Vanguard” could have used a supervillain with a better cast than the gentleman robber, who wants to blow a hole in a US aircraft carrier docked in Dubai. The lengths that screenwriter Tong does to flatter Dubai’s security forces suggest a nice discount for filming in that aspiring hot spot.
The action starts in London and features many scenes shot in and around an ancient fortress in India (I believe). Tong has a great eye for existing scenarios and the action is far better than acting in his film. A “brown face” scene should have been and could have been easily abandoned. The English dialogue included to make the film more suitable for the English language is sometimes spoken awkwardly. Chan reportedly nearly drowned while filming an elaborate sequence on a river with jet skis and gas rafts. Kaixuan’s newborn son believes his father is Captain China in real life, an action character. Can you say “Vanguard” merchandise? Even at the age of 66, Chan still has the moves from the action movie, slipping through the hood and into the open door of a racing SUV in one scene. With the help of him and many other actors, when you’re not shooting in the foot, “Vanguard” is mindless fun.
(“Vanguard” contains scenes of hand-to-hand combat and gun violence)
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