Donnie Yen had been in Hong Kong movies since in the 1980s. However, I admit that I only "discovered" him in 2008 when I saw the first "Ip Man" film. There had been three sequels since then (in 2010, 2015 and 2019), and in each one, Yen was consistently that cool, smooth, principled martial arts warrior, always so elegantly fascinating to watch.
Since 2000, he crossed over to Hollywood as action choreographer of "Highlander: Engame," "Blade II" and "Shanghai Knights," playing minor roles in them. Lately, Yen was in the Star Wars Universe no less, as Chirrut Îmwe in "Rogue One" (2016). This year, his English film is the live action version of Disney's "Mulan."
Sgt. Fallon Zhu (Donnie Yen) was an obsessive Hong Kong policeman who placed his fitness and duty above everything else. Even if he would always defeat the bad guys with his superior martial arts skills, he would cause a monumental mess doing it earning him the derisive nickname "Jackass of the Century." This extreme dedication to duty would also get him in trouble with his melodramatic TV actress fiancee Chloe Song (Niki Chow).
Finally dumped by Chloe and demoted to an office job by his superior Shing (Louis Cheung), all Fallon did for the next six months was to eat unhealthy snacks to drown out his misery, until he ballooned to twice his usual body weight. One day, overweight Fallon was assigned by Shing to escort a Japanese prisoner to Tokyo police, he would later be in conflict with a gang of ruthless Japanese gangsters.
This is a reinvention of a 1978 Sammo Hung film with the same title. Since I had only known Donnie Yen from "Ip Man," I was surprised to see him in such a silly comic role, wearing a fat suit and doing slapstick routines. Of course, his awesome graceful martial arts fighting was in full display throughout the film, even when he was already "fat". The fights inside the closed van, the Tokyo restaurant alley, and the Tokyo Tower finale were highlights.
Aside from the frenetic martial arts scenes, there was also a generous serving of comic squabbling between the bumbling Zhu and the nagging Chloe. There was also a side plot regarding Zhu's partner in Tokyo Thor (Wong Jing) and his restaurant-owner girlfriend (Teresa Mo) and their testy relationship. More comedy was delivered by the toupeed Japanese inspector Endo (Naoto Takenaka) and his ditzy translator Maggie (Jessica Jann).
Fans of classic kung fu movies will enjoy the various references to Bruce Lee films, since Zhu voraciously watched them when he was sidelined by injuries. One such scene presaged a fantastic scene of Donnie Yen fighting with nunchucks which was particularly exciting. Japanese police was portrayed very badly to be in cahoots with the Yakuza, quite uncomfortably un-PC. Anyhow overall, this was a lighthearted and silly action romp which was as entertaining as it was exhilarating to watch. 6/10.
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