Jackie Chan's The Myth Review
***The Myth is currently available in a variety of flavors of Hong Kong DVD. Click here for details on all the different releases ***
When Jackie Chan very publicly washed his hands of the Hollywood film industry and returned to Hong Kong his legions of fans around the world breathed an audible sigh of relief. When his first post-return film, New Police Story, hit screens the question everyone was asking was “Will this be it? Will this be the film where Chan finally returns to form after being so horribly watered down and misused in Hollywood?” And in many ways it was. But with the release of The Myth, Chan’s second post-return film, it is becoming increasingly clear that people have been asking the wrong question. Chan has spoken openly about his desire to make more serious films and New Police Story and The Myth make it very clear that he is not just making noise about it, Chan is taking serious steps to overhaul his image. The question is not whether Chan is returning to his classic form, the question is whether he even wants to go back there. Increasingly the answer seems to be no.
Now let’s step back for a moment before everyone gets carried away. Am I saying that Chan’s massively scaled time hopping epic is his move into serious art film? Is The Myth Chan’s answer to Hero? Absolutely not. Chan is, and likely will always remain, a populist film star in all the best ways. What this is is Chan recognizing that he can’t play the child forever. This is not the abandonment of his classic persona but rather a maturation of it. Chan wants to grow up.
Chan stars, as he so often does, as a character named after himself, in this case Dr. Jack Chan, an archaeologist plagued by perplexing, chronic dreams about a Qin era general pledged to protect a Korean princess being sent to the Qin Emperor as a concubine. His dreams have no relationship to his everyday life and yet Jack can’t shake the feeling that they mean something deeper and has grown increasingly obsessed with them, so much so that his girlfriend left him when he started calling out the dream princess’ name in the night. When his long time friend William, a physicist studying anti-gravity, asks him to help research ancient rumors and legends dealing with gravity defying acts Chan is swept into a series of events that increasingly seem to intersect his dreams and he becomes ever more convinced that they are telling him something, guiding him to something he must do.
Chan also stars as General Meng Yi, the figure in his dreams. Meng is a deeply loyal soldier who nonetheless falls in love with the woman he is pledged to protect and deliver. Meng never crosses any lines with the princess but he nevertheless falls deeply in love and pledges himself to her, setting up a story of unrequited love leading inevitably to tragedy.
The Myth, then is two films in one, a modern action adventure film a la Indiana Jones and a period set military epic. As Dr. Chan Jackie plays an older, wiser version of his normal stock character. His desire to shed his image comes through clearly, however. Chan simply does not play for comedy. The slapstick is all left to William, the action sequences – with one notable and truly excellent exception – are played very naturally, and though he can’t help from slipping into his standard baffled mode from time to time he generally carries himself with a decent sense of gravity. It is as Meng, however, that Chan really shines. The Qin general makes fantastic use of the visible aging and sagging features that Chan has been trying to hide for so long. If the doctor is a more grown up version of Chan’s stock character then Meng is Chan throwing down the gauntlet and declaring that he does indeed have more range and can play different characters. Is he going to win himself an Oscar? Not by any means, but he certainly proves himself capable of working with the right material.
In terms of production design The Myth is every bit the epic. The film trots the globe and makes fantastic use of some truly stunning locations and a pair of dazzlingly beautiful international costars. This is without a doubt the strongest a Chan film has ever been visually. The action sequences are strong with one of Chan’s gloriously goofy set pieces – this one on a factory conveyor belt prepping glue pad style mouse traps – to satisfy the old fans as well as some appropriately large scaled epic battling in the period pieces. These parts rank comfortably as the bloodiest fight work in the Chan canon. When the trailers for the film released I openly stated my opinion that the film was either poorly staged or the trailers were incredibly poorly edited. I am very pleased to say that it is option number two. The trailers looked bad, the film looks fantastic. Concerns about some of the action set in ancient times appearing slightly unrealistic are answered handily by the fact that since they occur in dreams they are meant to be slightly larger than life. Whoever had a historically accurate dream that fully obeyed the laws of physics, anyway? How boring would that be?
With all of this going for it The Myth is sounding like a new classic but unfortunately it also has some major flaws.
Problem one, particularly jarring in a Chan film, is an over reliance on CG graphics. In some cases they are needed but in others Chan is very clearly replaced by a CG double for stunts that he would have done himself without blinking an eye in his prime. It is a clear and sad reminder that Chan’s physical abilities are in decline and is a serious blow to the devoted Chan die hard.
More serious to the story however, are some significant script problems. Chan has worked with a close group of collaborators for quite some time now and he has remained loyal to them here, which is certainly admirable on a personal level, but the simple fact is that the writing crew that was good enough to churn out chop socky flicks is simply out of their depth here. The film starts strong but by the end you’ve had far too many plot holes and serious gaps in internal logic, not to mention a real world villain who appears out of nowhere and whose motivations and degree of knowledge make no sense whatsoever, to take the film entirely seriously. It aims high, but its reach exceeds its grasp. Through the first two acts the film maintains an admirable balance between the ‘real’ world and the ‘dream’ world, intercutting easily between them, solidly establishing the full range of characters, and giving the love story ample time to grow naturally. In the third act, however, it’s as thought the writers suddenly panicked and realized that they were in uncharted territory. Rather than allowing the story to reach its natural conclusion they reached back to what was familiar and inserted, seemingly out of nowhere, a completely unnecessary and largely nonsensical villain figure to create a big, noisy finish completely out of step with the tone of the rest of the picture. Then, as though they realize that they’d made some sort of mistake with this line they abandon it as suddenly as they brought it in, without any sort of proper resolution. Rather than relying on the emotional core of what they’d built until that point the writers opted for the hollow whiz-bang of a big, effects driven ending out of touch with the core of what the film is trying to do as a whole, an ending that distracts from the film’s deeper story and doesn’t even look particularly good while doing so.
With The Myth Chan has aimed to make an action adventure serial for adults, one rooted in a serious love story. He comes close to making a classic but in the end the flaws in the script cut it off at the knees leaving you with a technically accomplished and entertaining film that proves Chan’s desire and ability to grow up but demonstrates just as much that if he is to grow he is inevitably going to need to leave some of his old time collaborators behind. Though its flaws are unavoidable The Myth is, nonetheless, far superior to all but a few of Chan’s Hollywood titles and a sign that he is far from done. The growing pains are evident but the fact that Chan wants to grow at all when it would be far simpler and more lucrative to retreat back to the past gives me great hope for Chan’s future. Is the Myth perfect? No, but it is very entertaining and hopefully a sign of good things to come.
