Review | Vanguard movie review: Jackie Chan’s action adventure is old-fashioned and let down by a dismal script

This latest vehicle for Jackie Chan fails to tick any boxes: the plot is terrible and the special effects are awful
The dialogue is clunky with a shocking script from director Tong, and the baddies are forgettable

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Edmund Lee

Published: 1:05pm, 14 Oct 2020

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1.5/5 stars

Vanguard is the latest film by action superstar Jackie Chan and director Stanley Tong Kwai-lai – who collaborated on such early 1990s gems as Police Story 3: Super Cop and Rumble in the Bronx – so it has to be worth your attention. On the other hand, we’re now in 2020, and the 66-year-old Chan’s best gag in Vanguard sees him taking the stairs instead of jumping off a one-storey platform, so don’t get too excited.

This globe-trotting action adventure movie was meant to be a Lunar New Year release before it was delayed by the pandemic; it bombed at the mainland box office when it opened during the National Day holiday. And no wonder. Equipped with a cheesy Z-grade plot, forgettable villains, and some jaw-droppingly clunky lines of dialogue, Vanguard is that unashamedly old-fashioned Chan vehicle which makes one ponder why he’s still going at it.

Chan plays Tang Huanting, the bespectacled CEO of the titular international security firm, who has at his disposal a huge squad of elite agents, a seemingly unlimited amount of military-grade weapons, and various futuristic gadgets straight out of sci-fi movies. But all that, plus his own advancing years, somehow doesn’t stop Tang from tagging along on a new mission to rescue one VIP client from the grasp of some generic terrorists.

It hurts my mind to summarise the nonsensical case of that dubious Chinese businessman named Qin (Jackson Lou Hsueh-hsien), which involves a murderous Middle Eastern militia, a revenge plot whose background we are shown nothing about, a big hidden fortune, and some random weapons of mass destruction. To complicate things, Qin’s daughter, Fareeda (Xu Ruohan), is a wildlife conservationist who has angered Africa’s most vicious hunter.

The story moves from London’s Chinatown to an African jungle to a fortress town in the Middle East, before culminating in a frenetic finish in Dubai that sees Tang’s team help out the United States military (yeah right). Chan lets his younger co-stars – chiefly Yang Yang and Ai Lun – do the heavy lifting, including a messy kitchen fight that recalls Chan’s earlier comedies, and a fire fight that takes a page from Wolf Warrior 2 and Operation Red Sea .

But no amount of action – often delivered with atrocious computer effects – could compensate for the vacuum of dramatic interest conjured by Tong’s embarrassing attempt at screenwriting. One jarring effort to channel national pride, which sees Ai happily taking in how his nickname of “Captain China” is better than Captain America, may be the year’s single most cringeworthy scene. This is not a good look for anyone involved.

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