Review | Film review: The Foreigner – Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan shine in political thriller
With former Bond director Martin Campbell in charge, Chan delivers in a dramatic role as a revenge-seeking ex-special forces dad and Brosnan drops the overacting in this update of the 1992 novel The Chinaman
3½/5 stars
The Foreigner is an old-school political thriller that holds its course right until the end. Jackie Chan finally gets to play a dramatic character that suits his advancing years, and Pierce Brosnan, a former 007 who often enjoys hamming it up, puts in an uncharacteristically nuanced performance as a troubled politician.
Although it is based on the 1992 novel The Chinaman – about an Asian man hunting down members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to get revenge for his daughter’s death in a bomb attack – the film has been updated to reflect modern times.
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The Foreigner cleverly changes the villains to the Authentic IRA (an obvious reference to the breakaway Real IRA group), who launch a bombing campaign in London to derail the Northern Ireland peace process. It’s daring territory, and New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell, who previously made the Bond films GoldenEye and Casino Royale, makes a good job of it.
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This brings him into contact with Hennessy (Brosnan), a former IRA leader who is now a respectable politician. Quan threatens to kill Hennessy unless he turns over the names of the bombers, but there’s a problem: Hennessy genuinely doesn’t know who did it. To save his own skin, Hennessy launches into an internecine battle with his former IRA colleagues.