SKIPTRACE MOVIE REVIEW CLICK TO RATE THE MOVIE

Renny Harlin is one of the most popular directors from Finland, known for making nail-baiting action and adventurous films in the past like Die Hard 2 and Deep Blue Sea. He tries his hands on a comedy thriller, Skiptrace. He however, has one of the celebrated and skillful superstars ever from Hong Kong as his backbone. Has he made the most of him or has he wasted him like most filmmakers in the recent times? Do read further to know.

Jackie Chan plays a Hong Kong cop. He along with an American gambler fights against a Chinese mafia gang. Jackie Chan has tasted success with similar cross culture tag team buddy films in the past like Rush Hour series and Shanghai Noon. Now he gets another new partner in the form of Johnny Knoxville.

Skiptrace is a no-brainer that is lazily constructed. It has too many loose ends in the plot. The emphasis is on comedy and not on the script. Even the comedies don’t work on most occasions. It is nothing more than a rehash of few yesteryear action films of Jackie Chan’s and absolutely has nothing new to offer. Who cares about the story when Jackie Chan is in action? If you are one of those people who feel that way, you might even be in for a disappointment as stunts don’t come in regular intervals and one feels it could have been choreographed better.

The film starts with an interesting fight sequence and like in most Jackie Chan films, he fails at the start and wins only in the end. You could predict what is going to happen and the audiences are ahead of the film all the time.

Johnny Knoxville is one of the better partners that Jackie has got in recent times. He doesn’t annoy you. But since the script is so loosely made and you always know what he is going to do, he also doesn’t excite you. Jackie meets him for a flimsy reason and they had to travel together for God knows why when Jackie has got many other options to solve his problems. Like most double hero comedy films, they don’t get together well at the start, then turn into one of the thick friends, then part ways due to a disagreement to again join to fight the villain in the climax. That is how it’s been done all these years and you’ll find all those stereotypes in Skiptrace too.

Chi-Ying Chan’s cinematography is very good, but he was not supported adequately by the visual effects team. The CGI looks very bad especially during few crunch moments when it was most needed.

On the whole Skiptrace is another film that fails to utilize Chan's full range of skills. A hurried project that should have been made better.