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The Forbidden Kingdom
Rating: 
Cast:
Collin Chou; Jet Li; Michael Angarano; Yifei Liu; Jackie Chan; Bingbing Li
Directed by:
Rob Minkoff
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Martial arts legends together at last
In one sense, The Forbidden Kingdom is to Asian martial arts movies what Heat was to American crime thrillers. That is, it represents the first on-screen pairing of two 100-percent genuine screen icons.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://go.philly.com/onmovies.
Michael Mann brought Robert De Niro and Al Pacino together back in 1995, and Rob Minkoff (who? oh yeah, the guy who made Stuart Little) puts Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same room for this enjoyable, if hardly momentous, kung fu fest set in the smog-free days of ancient China.
Nicely shot, with heaps o' stick fighting and cartwheeling stunt and wire action, The Forbidden Kingdom is about a 21st-century teen (Michael Angarano) who hangs out in a South Boston pawn shop and - through a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-ish turn of events - gets tossed back in time, clutching a mystical staff.
Said weapon is much coveted by several parties, including the Jade Warlord (Colin Chou), who can smirk with the best of them, and the White-Haired Demoness (Li Bing Bing), whose tresses have more snap than a dominatrix's whip. (She has one of those, too.) The kid's staff could also bring the Monkey King - a mischievous martial arts master with funny facial hair - back to life, having been turned to stone in a duel that, long ago, didn't go so well.
Chan and Jet Li play the soused and silly Lu Yan and the agile, austere Silent Monk, respectively. An unlikely team, the drunken master and the Zen fighter pair up to teach young Jason (Angarano) how to battle hordes of oncoming, armor-plated extras, and to proffer advice on courting the lovely, though deadly, Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei). And so, our gang is off on a journey through green and glorious countryside, stopping in the bamboo forests for training montages, in a tavern or two for acrobatic fisticuff sessions, and ultimately at the palace of the Jade Warlord, where a major face-off ensues.
Delivering their lines in not-exactly-fluid English, Chan and Li quip and kickbox, while the women strike daunting poses and Angaro looks on with an expression that's equal parts dread and awe. Neither Chan nor Li are required to do anything that your typical middleaged martial arts superstar couldn't pull off in his sleep.
The special effects are effective, though not terribly special. While director Minkoff pays homage to past masters of the genre, the past masters were better at this game than he.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://go.philly.com/onmovies.
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