Railroad Tigers (2016)

I watched this on the plane back from China as a way to kill time and I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Films and dramas about the fight against the Japanese during World War II basically come out by the dozen in China, but this was so much fun.

Jackie Chan stars as a railroad worker who works on a railway from Tianjin to Nanjing  that serves as an important transportation route for the Japanese, and he leads a small group of fellow railroad workers in retaliating against the Japanese. Initially, they only rebel in small ways - stealing supplies from the Japanese, playing pranks on the soliders, etc., but they are driven by a growing desire to contribute more to the cause. No one around takes them seriously though, believing that there isn't really anything that a regular person can do to fight against what seems to be a losing battle.

Jackie's willingness to embrace the fact that he's older now has served him well in recent years - his character in this movie is a man of middle age who has a lost a lot in his life, and wants to see a better world for his daughter. He is portrayed as a normal man who uses his experience with working on the railroad (and of course, the usual Jackie ability to use various everyday items as tools and weapons) and leads by example. He's a man of few words, and maybe not the brightest bulb in the box, but his courage speaks volumes to those around him.

Tao and Jaycee Chan play two of the members of Jackie's crew, and both are street-smart, supporting characters who are crucial to helping Jackie accomplish his objectives. I liked both performances - neither tried to do too much with their roles and the action and humor was well-suited for their respective characters. If they tried to look cool, it was intentional humor, so it worked. I know Darren Wang is listed as part of the cast, but his part is pretty brief.

But I was most impressed by Wang Kai, who apparently has a career in comedy if he ever wants to change his career path. I found myself trying to hold in my laughter numerous times throughout his scenes. He's a fantastic actor, but I was still very  impressed by how well he balanced the humor out with his character, who was an army sniper turned restaurant owner after being completely disillusioned with how the war was going (his comedic timing is great). He and Jackie had the meatier roles by far, which is to be expected as they are the stronger actors here.

This isn't a movie that takes itself too seriously - it's an action comedy set in a remarkably serious period in Chinese history, so the contrasting tones may be a bit jarring at times, but I found it to be a nice breath of fresh air and a great take on what it means to be a hero.

Lire davantage

I love me some Jackie Chan movies, and especially now that there is such amazing advances in technology. The cinematography in this drama is captivating. The movie is set during the time Japan is taking over a lot of Asia. Thank goodness this drama is not as gory as other movies I've seen set during the same time. Jackie has his own little gang of train robbers, and they happen to rescue a Chinese soldier, who tells them about his last (suicide) mission. The gang takes into their hands to help the Chinese fulfill their mission (you know patriotism!!). They do crazy antics like trying to rob C4 from a Japanese military base, and totally F#@$ the train in order to fulfill the mission.

I really love the cast in this drama. They did a great job casting, I thought the actors were so diverse (they all weren't pretty/kawaii, but there is a lot of eye candy). I also though the chemistry between all the actors was amazing. I bet it must have been amazing for all the young actors to work with Jackie. :D

Overall, great movie. The plot was great and interesting, the acting was good. There was a nice balance between seriousness & comedy. Also the fighting scenes were pretty intense, even with them using guns and a tank ON A TRAIN!!! The CGI at the end was sucky, but that was my only complaint.

Lire davantage

"You Should Say Something Wise"....Ma Yuan - "Shut Up"

I would recommend you NOT watch this movie.

If I had known this was a Jackie Chan movie, I would have skipped it completely.

He is not funny, he is lousy in martial arts, and he is a pain in the butt, according to his co-stars.

Even so, I guess that I am gong to have to buy this movie as well; I buy each and every one of his movies because they are so bad!

When I have friends over, I always show one of his movies to show how BAD his acting and kung fu really is!

(Someone has to show people how bad Jackie and his movies really are!)

The cinematography was terrible; the music was terrible and the actors, main and support, are all terrible.

Especially, Yamaguchi (Ikeuchi Hiroyuki); the actors playing Yuko (Zhang Lan Xin) and Huang Yi Feng (Na Wei) probably had to get rabies shots after the one scene was filmed with him...Terrible!

Also, do not watch this movie is you have a bad heart; you could DIE from not laughing while watching this movie!

RE-WATCH: only to show your friends how bad of an actor Jackie Chan is!

Lire davantage

One is never too late for a Jackie Chan's movie, especially a comedy action movie of his. First of all, the way the story plot being presented is very straight forward like, literally doing a presentation with sub-titles of what to expect in the scenes as we go along. It's clean cut in such a way and you won't feel any interruptions. And with the theme on, 'let's do something big in this lifetime' coming out from average railroad workers, you know you are going to be in for rides filled with laughters. The bgm matched well with the scenes and helped to raise the dramatic-ness from the comedic aspects.

To me, the most crucial point of this movie fell on the good chemistry among the quite star-studded casts. They matched each other so well in their rhythms and one can really feel their comrades and brotherhood, which at times really what made their actions/sayings funny. There were many times that I was really laughing my heads off and I knew this movie is such feel-good humor movie worth watching. I like how Jackie Chan was not a one-man show in this movie and helped to bring out the acting skills of others casted in this movie through their interactions. In fact, it was an eye opening for me to see Wang Kai with his supposedly 'cool-I-know-what-I'm-doing-in-war' Fan Chuan character turned out to be a hilarious character with his constant 'rational' thinking. Another hilarious character akin to Fan Chuan was the Japanese Captain played by Ikeuchi Hiroyuki, which I see in the movie as to now wonder why he and Fan Chuan 'battling' it out the most.

I got to admit that my initial thought before I started to watch this movie was half expecting it to be typical China-produced war era movie, focusing much on patriotism. However, despite this movie having its patriotic moment, it wasn't shove down the audience throat like the usual ones. The feeling of "patriotism" (wanting for the freedom fighters to win despite their average tricks and fighting skills) was somewhat built into me as I watched the progress of how desperate this group of average men, dreaming of doing big things as they kept putting it in the movie, wanted to help the army to blow up the bridge.

I am not the type who rewatch but if I ever do catch this movie on TV or something, I won't mind rewatching just for the laughters.

Lire davantage