Robin-B-Hood – Review

All I can say is, this is definitely a Jackie Chan movie and fans will definitely not be disappointed at all. Well, maybe thats not ALL I can say. I’m a huge Jackie Chan fan, and this movie does deliver on its promise that it has some of his best stunt work in recent years. The fight scenes bring back memories of the old Police Story films, with fast and furious fighting all around. Jackie Chan and Louis Koo Tin-Lok star as mediocre bad guys Thongs and Octopus. Thongs and Octopus both need the money so they acquiesce and help the Landlord with the felony. Of course, Thongs and Octopus, through a partially botched kidnapping attempt, are forced to take care of the cute defecating infant until they can reestablish getting the kid to who hired them. Jackie and his co-stars’ characters are very sympathetic and the acting for the most part is spot on.

While there are many faults in this film and I think that many action purists will not like this film, I found much that was enjoyable from the comedy to the action and stunts. Now please Jackie no more movies with babies.  Of course,recently Jackie Chan made a statement that he wouldn’t act any more action films, but I hope to see him in many more films like Rob B Hood. Here, his screen time is almost equally shared with co-lead Louis Koo, with the both of them playing unsavoury characters.  If you understand Chinese and Chinese culture and or cinema history, you will probably see more funny things in this film than if you don’t.

As usual, the producers or directors try to make this movie more than it is by adding drama to it, but they needn’t have bothered, this movie should be shorter and quicker, and left the movie goers asking for more. Instead, the movie goers are looking at their watches wondering when the movie would end. Not that it is a bad film, by any means, it just has a really long running time. The supporting casts consists of actors past and present in roles that either brought back some good memories, or are milked just for laughs.  Like all big-budget movie extravaganzas, when there are too much of everything, the basic story lags. Some of the baby poop jokes were overdone as well as some of the infant’s scenes in general. I did end up liking this film though.

I’ve been a fan ever since in whatever he does and will always be. At the end of the day it all comes down to the entertainment value and this movie is surely entertaining. Its just pure fun, not taking it too seriously will also liven up the viewing of the film. The DVD from Dragon Dynasty is actually a 2 disc special edition and features tons of bonus material that I myself didn’t watch but I’m sure will be interesting enough for fans of the film. Could be lazy reviewing on my part, but we all know the problem with most movies from Hong Kong, is there are less focus on the flow in storytelling. Everything is set up completely for the action scenes, and not on believability. This is that type of movie.  To sum it up, I’d rather watch this film one hundred times than most of the drivel of the equivalent ‘budget’ that comes out of Hollywood.