Around the world in 80 days Jackie Chan, This film though based on the novel of Jules Verne’s Famous book of same title, is basically Jacky Chan’s film. He has taken full benefit of artistic liberties and produced a wonderful entertaining film.
Its refreshing to see him experiment and rediscover himself, while keeping his focus on his core competence, the martial arts. In this film he plays a role of a french vassal!! If this surprises you its just one of the many surprises the film offers.
The story is failrly simple, jacky is a thief, who steals the traditional relic (smiling Buddha) of his village from bank of england. He is on the run and needs to hid himself from the police (short term) and reach his village to restore it to shrine ( long term objective). He comes across the second hero, the scientist, who is working on his myriad of inventions and needs someone to be part of his experiments.
The minister of science, and the president of the royal society , Lord Kelvin is hindersome to the works of the innovator and abuses his position as stereotypical ministers do generally. The innovator is ridiculed in the royal sosciety of science and he gets into a wager of traveling the world in 80 days. Needless to say Jackie becomes a part of his entourage and they pick up a girl from a art exhibition in France( basically for cinematic reasons) as third member of their team. Now the team travels across the world and undergoes a motley of challenges and surprises till they reach back to claim their price.
There is also a side story of a Chinese warlord (lady) trying to usurp Jackie’s village , and is involved in an arms deal with Kelvin.She tries to stop the trio from fulfilling their tour, but fails, as expected.During the end the film really picks up pace, and with lot of well shot sequences ends with customary win of good against evil. Performance wise jackie has turned out another good performance. though the action sequences are nothing new and have been seen too many times, they appear enjoyable in this new packaging. The film portrays nice caricatures of office, administration and ofcource the queen. The cinematography is excellent and the film does a great job in creating the erstwhile London, Paris and , well World!! Arnie fans will surely be in for a surprise as he makes a guest appearance in the film.The other two have also put up a tidy showing.
The scenes in art exhibition in france, or those in an Indian train are well shot and really funny. though one would have liked a better portrayal of india. Overall, an enjoyable film.
If you liked Shanghai nights, you will surely like this one. Best enjoyed if watched with friends.