The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
Director: Bob Minkoff
Writer: John Fusco
Starring: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Mark Angarano, Yifei Liu, Collin Chou
Language: English
Runtime: 110 Minutes approx.
Age Rating: 12A
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Reviewed by Ross Miller
The Forbidden Kingdom is acceptable entertainment. It’s not one of those fun but ultimately bad films. It has its share of flaws, but this is all about flying kicks, magic-powered attacks, and fun camaraderie between the characters that makes for one of the most purely entertaining movies that’s been released all year.
An American teen obsessed with kung-fu makes a discovery of a mystical staff in a local pawn shop. He is soon transported on an adventure in ancient China where, along with some fellow travelers, he must free the legendary and now imprisoned Monkey King.
What can you expect from a film like this? Great fight sequences? Check. A likeable leading man? Check. A brisk pace? Check. A solid mythology? Check. I could go on and on. No, this is not trying to reinvent the wheel, but it does what it does quite well - satisfyingly well anyway. It’s not pretending to be anything it’s not; it takes a fairly generic storyline and puts some fresh spins on most of the elements of it.
Although myself I would have preferred this to be a more violent affair, I have absolutely no problem accepting its ‘playing it soft’ mentality. Despite the lack of bloodshed and full-on graphic violence, this is fun and entertaining stuff for its age rating. It manages to be safe enough, as far as the action and fighting goes, for any younger viewers, but still feels kick-ass to anyone a little bit older.
For any long-standing fan of cinema, particularly action cinema, even the notion of seeing two martial arts legends like Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the one movie is absolute heaven. The movie very much knows people have always wanted to see these two on screen at the same time, evidenced right off the bat when the opening credits merge the J of both their names, and it delivers an adequate amount of the scenes we’d all hoped to see.
Although it’s maybe not as high quality of a movie as you’d hope with the names Chan and Li attached, it’s still far from disappointing. There’s the obligatory fight sequence between the two, which surprisingly is quite early on in the film (that’s almost worth the price of your ticket alone), and they have good on-screen chemistry together. They’re not the greatest of actors, but that’s not really what we want from them, now is it? They do an adequate job in the non-action scenes and a fantastic job during them.
When I heard the movie, which finally brings together the action legends Chan and Li, was going to be primarily about an American teen, I wasn’t at all happy. But as it turns out, the way they go about telling this story of this young guy (played by Michael Angarano) being transported to this ancient Chinese land works really well. Angarano is a likeable lead for us to follow; we can root for him very easily and even relate to him (well some of us, anyway).
I am very much a fan of films where a character starts off as weak and naïve, but soon trains and becomes stronger and smarter. There’s the obligatory, but still fun, training sequences where Chan’s Lu is the teacher giving the young man a necessary tough time.
Any experienced fan of movies will spot references to stuff like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and particularly Bloodsport. It takes the action/fight sequences from these movies, and many others of course, and employs them similarly here. But it’s too innocent, if I may use such a word, to be seen as ripping anything off. Rather, because the type of film it is, it can be looked at as homage.
There’s a fair share of Crouching Tiger-style action involving what is clearly wires, but it adds to the whole feel of it being magical, mystical, and very much fantasy like. It’s not only Chan and Li who get into the thick of it; even our young protagonist uses his training to fight what seems to be an everlasting, recuperating group of soldiers in a number of scenes, adversaries which match his stature and, of course, the leading bad guy. They are very well choreographed and ultimately very entertaining to watch.
The film is a little cheesy in a fair few of its scenes, particularly those involving Angarano and a young female traveler, and there’s the long lasting complaint of why they are speaking English instead of the native language of the land, but it’s not in any way enough to weigh the film down to any sort of irredeemable level.
The Forbidden Kingdom is not Citizen Kane, or more applicable Seven Samurai (although, to be fair, I don't think it was aiming to be), and it’s not quite the quality of movie you’d hope for from an inclusion of an on-screen partnership of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, but it is solid entertainment. It is a fun and worthwhile kung-fu frolic that serves its purpose well.
