I dared to hope that The Foreigner would be something special for Jackie Chan. The trailers all sold him very well for me because no more were we getting another typical Chan action flick produced in Hong Kong. This was something that I wanted to see Chan in.
But right from the start, the style of director Martin Campbell and his weakness already started seeping through. The way things happened felt forced and too well planned to look like an accident.
Things happened just for dramatic effects. And just like how the police went to Chan's apartment and asked if he had any other relatives; under Campbell's direction, Chan in a darkened room, slowly looked up and said he no longer had any while at that exact moment a tear drop came down his cheek.
And for the first half of the movie, Chan walked like he was in his 70's, shuffling his feet and with a hunchback. In the second half all that were gone as he even did one of those body flip from the ground to standing position.
And we still had to sit through yet another cheesy training sequence. Everything in here was very on the nose and I longed for some subtlety.
But Chan delivered one of his best performances for me. He played it serious all the way through and you could see it even in his eyes of his pain. Equally well performed was Pierce Brosnan, and the story was very well told because you had to keep guessing if Brosnan's character was the bad guy or somebody else.
Despite the subtlety that was lacking painfully, the movie actually played out quite well with consistent pacing and tone. And it was entertaining enough to be enjoyable.
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