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Jackie Chan (Rumble in the Bronx, Rush Hour) scores his third American hit in Shanghai Noon, a comedic western that provides the escapist pleasures of an old Saturday matinee. Jackie plays a palace guard who travels from the Forbidden City to the Old West to help rescue the Emperor of China's kidnapped daughter (Ally McBeal's Lucy Liu). Once in the States, he forms an uneasy allegiance with an off-the-wall outlaw, Owen Wilson (Bottle Rocket), and together they spend the rest of the movie trying to elude Xander Berkeley's extravagantly evil sheriff. Berkely's character is named Lee VanCleef in a nod to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that is only one of the film's many postmodern jokes. Of course, there are plenty of dazzling fight scenes in which Chan -- middle-aged now but still astonishingly agile -- performs the gravity-defying stunts for which he is justly famous. And the film looks great, with its backdrop of stirring vistas that recall the classic westerns. The real charm of Shanghai Noon, though, lies in the rapport between Chan, always a delightful comedian, and costar Wilson, whose anachronistic California slacker persona is offbeat and genuinely funny. Refreshing in its absence of high-tech weaponry, Shanghai Noon seems oddly innocent in comparison to most contemporary action films -- and a whole lot more fun. Kryssa Schemmerling

All Movie Guide

Jackie Chan has often played a fish out of water, but he's rarely found himself so far upstream as in this comic adventure, in which he puts his fighting skills to the test in the Old West of the 1850s. Lo Fong (Roger Yuan), onetime captain of the Chinese Imperial Guard, has traded upholding the law for smuggling opium. Needing some operating capital, Lo Fong kidnaps the Emperor's daughter, Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu), and takes her to America. When the Emperor sends his best men to find her, Chon Wang (Chan), one of the Emperor's less distinguished guards, insists on joining them; he feels at fault for Lo Fong's capturing the Princess, and he wants to make amends. However, while the rescue party scours the West, Chon Wang gets separated from the group and soon becomes lost. When he crosses paths with Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson), a bright but arrogant train robber, the two become unlikely allies. While Shanghai Noon was billed as Jackie Chan's follow-up to Rush Hour, his first successful American-made feature, it was actually filmed in Canada, as was Chan's breakthrough film in America, the Hong Kong-backed Rumble in the Bronx. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 717951010605
• Source: WALT DISNEY VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: English, Español
• Time: 1:50:00
• Sales Rank: 18,269

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Shanghai Noon & Shanghai Knights (2pc)

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