| "Medallion" by Jackie Chan on Moscow screens A child born in the fourth month of the year of the Snake will gain power over an ancient medallion on which a snake and a fish are intertwined. The one who takes possession of one half of the medallion becomes invulnerable and dexterous; the one who receives both halves is granted immortality; the one who has the whole medallion and the child becomes the ruler of the world. The villain, nicknamed Snake Head (Julian Sands), wants to have everything at once. Hong Kong policeman Eddie Yang (Jackie Chan) wants to catch Snake Head, but instead he first gets shot in the chest and then gets unprecedented powers.
The film was going to be released back in May last year, but it was released only in October 2003. By that time, Jackichan's "Tuxedo" had already failed - a film similar to "Medallion" a little more than it should have been. In both cases, Chan's hero - of course, completely by accident - becomes the owner of a powerful artifact that makes the owner skilled and invulnerable. Both here and there, the hero was helped by beauties who were no strangers to hand-to-hand combat, played by young ladies who had not previously been seen in combat activity on the screen: in “Tuxedo” - Jennifer Love Hewitt, in “Medallion” - Claire Forlani. The only difference is that the hero of “Tuxedo” Jimmy Tong, before changing clothes, was a completely weakling, and Eddie Yang, even without any medallion, swung his legs quite tolerably in the status of a Hong Kong policeman. Moreover, perhaps, in the general direction of deceit: the bulletproof and rapid-fire tuxedo was a kind of misplaced armor from the spy vaults of James Bond's gunsmith Q, while the medallion concentrates the quasi-Oriental esotericism that blossomed in Hollywood in the mid-80s , spawning films like Big Trouble in Little China and - especially - The Golden Child, which The Locket resembles almost more than The Tuxedo. As a result, approximately in the middle of the film, Eddie Yang is killed outright in the most natural way, after which, with the help of a medallion that has begun to spark, another, completely alive Eddie Yang is formed in space, and the previous one, lifeless, dissolves in the air without a trace. From this moment on, the inspector is not affected by either bullets or falls from a great height onto a hard surface, and watching all this becomes completely uninteresting: after all, nothing truly dangerous will happen to the main character.
Next year Jackie Chan will turn fifty, and in “Medallion” this is somehow especially clearly visible. He can still deftly knock a pistol out of the hands of a thug attacking him or run over the seats of a row of bicycles without losing his balance - but in principle he could do without it. It is increasingly difficult for Jackie Chan to rely only on the strength of his hands - and the point is not only in physical training, but also in the exhaustion of the creative method. If earlier it was a living special effect in itself, now it cannot do without magical objects or simply assistants: all of Chan’s films of the late nineties and early 2000s (with the exception of those in which tuxedos and medallions act) are “buddy movies” about partners (two “Rush Hours”, “Shanghai Noon” and “Shanghai Knights”). The eternal loner had to understand that one in the field is not a warrior. Therefore, he has to seek support from anyone - like the wild English comedian Lee Evans, who in "Medallion" portrays the Interpol partner Ian, a dunce with the characteristic surname Watson and looks like a bizarre hybrid of Norman Wisdom in the role of Mr. Pitkin, Jerry Lewis in the original "Nuts" Professor" and our Savely Kramarov in the most memorable episodes of the two-part film of the Kyiv Film Studio "The Mechanical Adventures of Shtepsel and Tarapunka." And Claire Forlani, with her offensively monotonous laughter, fits into the general morbidly humorous atmosphere.
In general, no matter how offensive it is to admit it, everything is quite sad. And this despite the fact that “Medallion” looks much more decent than half a dozen of Chan’s previous opuses - after all, the director here was Gordon Chan, who was previously responsible for really good films (like “Fist of Legend” with Jet Li or the brutal “Cops -animals") and did not lose his professional skills even under the dictates of Hollywood levelers. If this film had been Chan's first American appearance on the big screen, it wouldn't have been worth the price; after all, the aforementioned “Golden Child” was loved by everyone in his time, and no one would refuse to watch Jackie Chan in the role of young Eddie Murphy, for that matter. But after Chan finally discredited his favorite techniques in profitable but empty American crafts, his new escapade of good irony and full of secret hopes is no longer enough. I would like to redirect to Chan the phrase that his angry partner throws at him in “Medallion”: “Go back to Asia and do what you really know.” Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY |
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