Vanguard

On approach, Vanguard could be mistaken for a spiritual sequel to Police Story 3: Supercop, a belated opportunity for Jackie Chan and director Stanley Tong to demonstrate that, thirty years removed from their peak, there's still life in these old dogs yet. This follow-up presumption does pan out but not for any reason that would actually translate into an enjoyable filmgoing experience. Vanguard, a ham-fisted slog for the majority of its runtime, has its roots in scenes felt superfluous for Supercop's international release - the pre-handover courting sequences that sought to draw a line between Chan's valorous Hong Kong policeman and the drilled duty of Michelle Yeoh's starched, CCP, suit. 

Vanguard then fulfils the East Asian hegemony proposed by Supercop, with Chan now completely subsumed into a mainland filmmaking system that presents as the buttoned-up antithesis of the island city's permit flaunting, vérité, action cinema. Worth noting as well that, politically speaking, Vanguard is also acutely revolting. The film is a hatchet job that depicts Muslims as pointedly unprincipled bumblers, easily undone in their gauche, money-grubbing, efforts to kidnap noble Chinese businessmen. Somewhere in this agitprop Chan plays Tang Huanting, the Bosley to a team of young, presentable, private military agents who operate, unmolested, in any country they see fit. Vanguard is the spy film as reassuring propaganda, hardly a crime only Chinese filmmaking is guilty of, but where similar, western, efforts at least revel in their sweaty rule-breaking, Vanguard adopts the humourless stance of the prefect. 

Of course, this disingenuous hectoring could be forgiven if Vanguard worked itself up to the bone-crunching melodrama that made Chan's name. Sadly Tong's film is cautious to a fault, burying any physical sense of excitement in treacly, computer generated, nonsense. Chan himself - admittedly well into his sixties now - is barely called upon, instead functioning as a floating seal of approval for younger action stars like the charmless Yang Yang or the underutilised Miya Muqi. Viewers desperate for Vanguard to portray any real jeopardy will have to stick around for the end credit outtakes to catch a glimpse of an overcast, choppy canal before it is transformed into a Zambian waterfall. Chan, with Miya aboard, capsizes their jet-ski then disappears completely from the static shot. Chan is unseen for 15 long seconds, leaving the worried, and slightly concussed, looking actress to fling her head around searching for her older co-star. Rescue boats eventually race in, pulling a breathless looking Chan up from the opposite, obscured, side of the overturned water craft.