journal features

movie review - Skiptrace

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2017.02.24

Someone decided, "Let's put Johnny Knoxville from Jackass in a movie with Jackie Chan." Everyone round the table agreed, and here we are.

I have to say, I enjoyed it but won't recommend it. Chan, as always, makes a great straight guy and Knoxville's rogue makes a great counterpart. The basic idea is that Chan's HK cop is meant to transport Knoxville's gambler (con-man) from Macau to Hong Kong. The plan doesn't go well, and along the way they take in a great deal of China and even Mongolia. It's good as far as that goes, and not entirely stupid. But the editing is a bit choppy, with plenty of jumping from scene to scene in a way that's more than a bit distracting. There are scenes that are barely connected, and at least one completely unnecessary scene (featuring Mongolian singing). The supposed charm of the pairing is deflated by puerile humor and a lack of real character development. It feels like a missed opportunity.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)