Double Trouble

Would an action comedy starring the son of Jackie Chan get into double trouble? Fortunately, there is a little substance for the Taiwan-China collaboration and may exceed some expectations for a movie that has received less hype than its main star may suggest, but it is not a winner either.

In "Double Trouble", Jay (Jaycee Chan) and Brother Ocean (Xia Yu) are two security guards who are working on two different sides of the continent. J is the personnel of a security firm working to protect ancient Chinese paintings for the Taiwan Royal Palace Museum, while Ocean is a lowly security guard from Beijing, who happens to be visiting the island nation on holiday.

When a pair of cat burglars (Jessica C and Shoko), working for an international art thief (Jin Rong), manages to steal away the paintings, Jay is forced to renegade from his security firm that suspects him to be an insider and track down the thieves when he bumps into Ocean. Due to Jay's present duty to secure the paintings and Ocean's unwilling involvement as a witness to the theft, the pair is forced to work together to get the paintings back before it is smuggled out of Taiwan.

What is commendable about this movie is that its humour runs mainly on crude jokes that poke fun of the political undercurrent between Mainland China and Taiwan. There is an ironic sense of humour when Xia Yu's perfectly played Chinese mainlander is alienated as the odd one stuck on a strange land. His partnership with Jaycee makes an unlikely combination that is enjoyable most of the time, especially through their different accents (and the occasional dialect) and the situations they end up in due to their difference in cultural conceptions.

The quirky stereotypes that they meet as they roam around the island are played by a supporting cast that does not need to try too hard to get a snicker out of you. Those who recognize the two well-known Taiwanese TV hosts appearing in this movie, in particular, will find their scene to be one of the finest moments in this movie when you can read between the lines.

There are some dare-devilishly daring action sequences that may seem a little ambitious for the non-action star cast (except for Jaycee), but just seeing them being executed neatly is enough to be as gripping as the more death-defying ones. That is not to say that there is not any obvious CG works involved, but criticizing the effort would fall under nit-picking.

Although audiences may be expecting a lot more from the son of Jackie Chan, it is still probably a bar set too high for Jaycee to be compared to his father. Jaycee may not have performed as much of the high-risk stunts as his father had when he was at his age, but he did show that he has the ability to be immersed in a character more than just the mascot figure that his father had played in the decades of his career. Even so, there is plenty of room for improvement for Jaycee, and it would be exciting to see how far he could go if he ever decides to follow his father's footsteps.

"Double Trouble" is an above-average mix of ballsy humour (quite literally), challenging action sequences, and an unlikely combination of two different-styled actors that becomes one well-packed package of entertainment. This is one of the rare Chinese-speaking productions that you would ask for more than its one and a half hour run.

"Double Trouble" is released in Malaysian and Singaporean cinemas on 14 June.