Gorgeous
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Jackie Chan, Emil Chow, that one girl, Brad Allen, Ken Lo, Kwan Yeung

One of the newest Jackie films, Gorgeous is more about flavor than action. I say that both out of disgust and admiration, because the movie does look very VERY good. Jackie's house is all silver and glass, and the picture quality is extremely good, especially if you have the DVD.

Jackie is a stock trader, who owns, well, lots of stock, and he's rich. Then a girl named Bu comes from a magical island (she thinks) and falls in love with him, bla bla. I didn't care at all for the cutesy story, especially since this girl is, what, 22? Jackie was 45 or so at the time. I dunno if I'm much for that, but anyways, go Jackie.

The first action scene (this is what the reviews are about, sorry) has Jackie up against 4 others on a yacht, 2 of them are Ken Lo and Kwan Yeung. I was more impressed with Kwan here than in Who Am I? because he's smoother looking now and doesn't move around like he's been planned. Ken Lo's part is too small. He only plays an idiot. But Jackie gets to perform with a jacket, which is neat. Plus he gets some comedy-fu, poking Ken Lo in each eye very slowly. I couldn't help but laugh. A tiny bit of kickboxing from Ken Lo, and the fight ends with Jackie doing a very intricate HK spin off the boat.



Second scene is where he gets to play around with baseball bats, which is impressive. 4 others each have a bat, and Jackie ends up with them all, and plays around. Enough said I guess.



The fight with Brad Allen was more of a boxing match than anything. Actually it WAS a boxing match. The first one is more impressive than the second one in my opinion, mainly because of the better camerawork, crisper choreography (I thought), more kicks, and longer cuts. Jackie's doubled for some harder moves, and I wonder if he had wires. Nonetheless, it's good for a modern fight and quite long too.



The second one is longer (around 4 minutes cut apart) and it's done really well. Lots of fast movement, and even though Jackie gets beaten, he can still put on a decent performance. Brad Allen does 4 bike kicks in the air. Jackie's on wires too during the last part to make him able to do the kicks, but they're not obvious. What I don't like about this fight is the constant flailing of punches that don't really seem to make sense especially on the VCD version which has a blur effect (each frame looks like the average of 2 others), so I thought the choreography was a bit spoiled. But Brad can kick really REALLY well. Fast and high.



A big turn off in these fights was the music and sound effects. The sounds were obnoxious, and the music was, well, it was meant for other parts in the movie, not a fight! It was the kind of music played during a scene where someone sneaks into a building or something like that. I actually liked the dubbed music more and felt it suited the mood more.

As you can tell I'm not overjoyed at this movie, nor was I after I watched it the first time. I like the fights, but they're repetitive in nature, punches and kicks, a few elbows, nothing else. Hardly ANY acrobatics from either of the fighters, except for Allen doing a breakdance-like move to get up and Jackie rolling with his arms extended on the ground horizontally to do the same. And the plot was a love story, so there's even less reason for me to be excited. It's a cutsy movie, something I don't really like unless it's done well. This one isn't to my liking, but if you're into choreographed boxing (Van Damme in No Surrender, No Retreat is an example), this should satisfy, but if you're looking for intricate wu shu don't watch this.

6/10 - I feel this movie is overrated and I would like to see a movie with really good action get such a spotlight. It never happens it seems. You get Romeo Must Die and Black Mask in the theatres, while no one even sees Fist of Legend on the shelves. The Matrix is known for it's martial arts expertise while the release of Project A turns 1 or 2 heads at Blockbuster. Gorgeous wasn't even released in theatres in the US, and look at its popularity. Again, not for action, in my opinion.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

3/5 - Still overrated.

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