Shanghai Noon is one of several buddy movies from the late 90s/early naughties starring Jackie Chan. This one also stars Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, Brandon Merrill, Xander Berkeley, Roger Yuan, and Walton Goggins.
Chon Wang (Chan) is an Imperial Guard in China, and has a distant crush on Princess Pei Pei (Liu). When she is kidnapped, he follows along with his uncle (Henry O), the royal translator, to try and get her back. His uncle is killed during a train robbery, and thus begins the hijinks!
The leader of the train robbers, Roy O'Bannon (Wilson) isn't really interested in killing or hurting anyone, but made the mistake picking up an unstable new member (Goggins, happily chewing scenery). In any case, it follows the usual buddy movie beats - Chon and Roy meet, fight, meet, fight, get forced into a situation where they have to work together, and finally learn the stakes. The kidnapping was orchestrated by Lo Fung (Yuan), a former Imperial Guard and traitor to China, now a rich man effectively using Chinese slave labor to build railroads. Roy also has his own bete noir, a US Marshall named Van Cleef (Berkeley), who winds up a hired gun for Lo Fung.
Anyway, this all comes to a head in a climactic battle in a church, because obviously.
Shanghai Noon is standard buddy-cop (kinda, they aren't cops) story formula, which lives or dies on the conflict and chemistry between the leads. Fortunately, both Chan and Wilson are very funny, and unlike Rush Hour, which kinda let Chris Tucker's energy overshadow Chan's, in this movie both of them have time to be funny. Also, the movie doesn't try to make Wilson equally good in a fight - he's a fuckup when it comes to physical stuff (well, he can ride well, I guess), meaning that Chan's impressive stunt work shines. (And, this despite the fact that while Chan's character is an Imperial Guard, he's not really meant to be one of the better ones, so the movie actually allows him to look lucky as well as good sometimes.)
The supporting cast is solid, though for the most part they don't get a lot to do. Brandon Merrill plays a Native woman that winds up married to Chon Wang, and then basically follows him around for the whole movie and saves his ass when necessary. Lucy Liu is, I'm sorry to say, kind of wasted as Pei Pei - she's a much more capable actress than the role she has. Both Yuan and Berkeley get to be cool and evil as the villains, and Goggins gets to be comic-relief villainy, which is a weird niche but he's made it work in a few movies since.
Lots of anachronisms, mostly in the dialog, and a few jokes that don't really land ("I don't know karate, but I know kah-razy" - c'mon, now), and too many Kid Rock songs on the soundtrack (that is, one), but overall it's a fun action comedy that doesn't ask us to root for cops, and that's nice.
My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: High
Next up: The Shape of Water
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