[yasr_overall_rating]
A railroad worker in China in 1941 leads a team of freedom fighters against the Japanese in order to get food for the poor.
My wife and I recently binge-watched the entire “Rush Hour” trilogy (because we have nothing better to do with our lives, apparently), and it struck me how well the first one holds up, and how badly its two sequels aged, their blatant racism/misogyny/homophobia – mostly coming from the Ugly American embodiment, Mr. Chris Tucker – leaving a nasty taste in your mouth that overwhelms the pleasure of watching Jackie Chan do his thing. That said, his bits were by far the highlights of the films.
Now, 10 years after the third part of Brett Ratner’s monumental contribution to the echelons of action cinema, Jackie Chan is still doing his thing – at 63, mind you! – in the latest $50 million extravaganza from China (which the star also produced). He hops on top of moving trains, glides down ropes, runs up brick walls and drop-kicks enemies – though not quite as, um, boisterously as he used to, with frequent, questionable cuts that suggest the use of stunt doubles. The aging actor’s golden years have passed, he’s going through his Steven Seagal stage, and that’s totally understandable – not so forgivable is the film’s jarring pacing and a lack of cohesiveness. Like its eminent lead actor, “Railroad Tigers” means well and is frequently entertaining, but its joints are creaky and it frequently falls flat on its ass.
The film opens in the modern day. When a child wanders off during a poorly-supervised British school excursion at a railroad museum, he comes upon a crude chalk drawing of a “flying tiger” on one of the trains. This segues to an eyeball-scorching title credit sequence – and then we are transported back to mid-20th-Century China. Has the kid opened a time portal in the back of that train? The introduction seems to serve no purpose – but we shall see.
One of the many animated, freeze-frame, graphic-novel-style title credits introduces us to Da Hai (Zitao Huang), an amateur tailor. He encounters Chinese freedom fighter Ma Yuan (Jackie Chan) – the “Head Porter,” whose “catchphrase” is “Shut Up” (some characters have catchphrases like “What Now?”… don’t ask, I have no idea) – on top of a speeding locomotive. Ma Yuan’s gang knock out and rob the train’s Japanese crew. Da Hai consequently joins the Robin Hoods of 1940s China.
To list off the rest of the plot would take many paragraphs, as it zig-zags along with relentless abandon, with a million characters and twice as many jump-cuts. In a nutshell: Ma Yuan sets out to avenge his mother’s death and face off against the captain of the Japanese military police, by blowing up a crucial railroad bridge and cutting off enemy supplies. Obstacles arise – imprisonment, a failed attempt to steal explosives – all leading to a final, extended stand-off on top of the aforementioned bridge.
Ding Sheng’s sixth directorial feature contains some nifty sequences. There are two standouts. The first comes during the gang’s robbery of a warehouse and consequent escape on a train from a small army of Japanese soldiers, fighting them off with bags of flour. The second highlight arrives during the way over-extended finale – a tank battle on top of a train that has to be seen to be believed. The rest of the action is competently staged if unremarkable. I liked the scene where a member of the gang hides underneath a fire-pit, coals lighting him aflame. A particularly clever descent into a moving train from a bridge also stood out. Ma Yuan gang’s camaraderie is apparent and there is an infectious spirit to the proceedings, like everyone involved had a blast doing this.
That said, the humor is wildly uneven, as is the editing and pacing (the filmmakers didn’t seem to know how to go from one scene to the next, resorting to frequent fade-outs and chapter titles). The film reduces the turmoils of the Chinese-Japanese conflict to a slapstick comedy, most of it derived from the Looney Tunes fight scenes and silly verbal exchanges. Sheng’s feature is overstuffed with so many characters, including an unfunny magician with a tragic fate, that the plot seems more needlessly convoluted that it actually is. Despite its overstuffed nature, most of the story beats here will be predictable even to the non-jaded action fans. Ma Yuan’s characters aren’t really fleshed out beyond comic stereotypes – but the Japanese fare way worse, reduced to cardboard villains who suffer grisly deaths for comedic effect. Stretched out over two hours, the train-hopping action becomes repetitive. Some of the special effects are questionable, and that’s putting it kindly.
As for the weird introduction with the kid, it really was just that – a way to start and end the film, as if the writers just tacked it on for no apparent reason. It really isn’t a storytelling technique – the child’s not reading the unfolding events in a book, nor is he being told this story by the wise old spirit of Ma Yuan – it’s just… there. Despite its frequent allusions to classic Westerns of yore, “High Noon,” this ain’t. It’s not even “Rush Hour,” where your jaw would intermittently drop at Chan’s hijinks. If you’re looking for prime Jackie Chan, watch the “Police Story” trilogy. As for “Railroad Tigers,” the locomotive doesn’t quite derail – but it does belong in a museum.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD June 20th
