The Medallion

Jackie Chan has always been fairly critical of the shortcomings of his American made movies, and while it's difficult to feel much sympathy for a man who picks up fat pay cheques for his services, it's possible to see where he's coming from. A wonderful physical comedian whose body is the punchline for his best gags, Chan is all too often sold short by the one-dimensional attitude adopted by his American operations. Nowhere was this more evident than in the awful 'The Tuxedo' and while 'The Medallion' is a slight improvement, it's painfully obvious that his Hollywood fare still leaves an awful lot to be desired.

Here, the Jackiemeister plays Eddie Yang, a Hong Kong cop who travels to Ireland (Begorrah!) in an effort to find the medallion of the title, an ancient prize which essentially gives its wearer invincibility. The key to the medallion is Jai (Bao), a young boy with supernatural gifts who has been nicked by the nefarious Snakehead (Sands) and, after lots of nonsense, is smuggled into the ould sod. Thus it's up to Chan and his new Interpol agent friends - Evans, Forlani and Rhys-Davis - to get it back before Snakehead can do very nasty things indeed.

For the first few minutes, 'The Medallion' threatens to abandon the recent trend to push CGI into new arenas, as Chan is expertly choreographed by fellow veteran Hong Kong stunt man, Sammo Hung. However, after a spirited, tongue-in-cheek introduction, the director Gordon Chan (no relation) decides to up the ante, dislocating the initially pleasing if cartoonish atmosphere of the film, and conferring 'The Medallion' with a generic action picture status that simply doesn't do the talents of its star justice.