Mark Reviews Movies: THE ROOKIES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 15, 2021

Writer/director Alan Yuen wants The Rookies to be a big and silly spy spoof, and on a paper, that's technically a correct description of the movie. It is, admittedly, a pretty sizeable production, with plenty of visual effects and a lot of action and a little bit of globetrotting (from China to Budapest), and all kinds of goofiness, featuring hapless characters and over-the-top ideas and an evil plan so ridiculous that even the filmmaker seems hesitant to show it on screen. There's a considerable problem, though: The movie simply isn't that funny.

Humor is subjective, of course, but there's little denying that Yuen goes out of his way here to cram as many gags into this movie as possible. It doesn't matter if they make sense in the moment or within the broader scope of nudging the typical spy thriller.

The most noticeable reason that Yuen's particular approach doesn't work, though, is that the filmmaker does take just enough of the story and the characters seriously. He wants us to accept this tale of underdog spies, doing their best and often stumbling through their worst to save the world, at face value, but he also wants to undermine the entire affair with humor. That kind of tonal whiplash is difficult to tolerate and even harder to accept.

The main character is Zhao Feng (Talu Wang), a stunt performer with an online video channel and a considerable following. After racing a competitor to the top of a skyscraper's lightning rod just in time for an inconvenient lightning storm, Feng inconveniently parachutes into the secret headquarters of a criminal organization.

With some more bad timing, his arrival coincides with an illegal deal for a top-secret bio-weapon. Feng tries to charm and fib his way out of danger, but he's saved at the last minute by the appearance of Bruce (Milla Jovovich), an agent from a private intelligence organization. She later and suddenly appears in his bedroom (after a really weird extended gag involving an inflatable sex doll and his mother), offering Feng a stack of cash to help stop another deal for the weapon—involving the literal Holy Grail—that's about to go down in Budapest.

The plot is, well, a mess of uncertain dealings, questionable character motivations, and pile upon pile of complications. Tracking Feng to Hungary is Interpol agent Miao Yan (Sandrine Pinna), a woman with mental health issues, a repressed temper, and a personal grudge against the stuntman. While the actual spies try to stop the deal, Feng and his inventor friend Ding Shan (Timmy Xu), with Miao pretending to be a fan, assemble their own team to beat Bruce at her own game—mainly because there otherwise wouldn't be a plot.

That's just the beginning of a rambling series of plot points and action sequences, as well as some unnecessarily elaborate gags. The team of amateur spies disguise themselves as a rock band, complete with stage makeup like Kiss, to get inside the mansion, and a better, more direct scene has Feng trying to remember a series of numbers in a room filled with distracting digits. There's a lengthy chase in the streets, where Bruce and her pursuer simply spin around in circles shooting at each other (That part's kind of amusing, because all chases are little more than that, if you think about it). Another plan to stop yet another top-secret deal plays out with success, only to actually be a complete failure, and Yuen does such a poor job dividing the imagined plan from the actual mission that the joke of the scene is non-existent.

There are more gags and even more redundant plot setups, but Yuen ultimately gets in the way of his own weak comedy in a couple of ways. First, there's the story's odd transition toward a more serious tone, when the threat of the bio-weapon becomes real (It turns people into plants, by the way, which would be ridiculous, if only we didn't see it in action by way of a little girl crying in pain) and one of the amateur spies is killed in action. The director tries to impart the severity of these events, only to go right back to the silly stuff, namely a car that transforms into a walking robot.

There's also an unfortunate streak of cruelty that punctuates some of the gags, whether it be a cop—the butt of the joke in the spinning chase—who's executed by the villainous Iron Fist (David Lee McInnis) or a henchman who's taken on a perilous ride hanging from a car, only to be crushed as a punch line. It's odd that The Rookies, a movie that desperately wants us to laugh, does so much to prevent us from doing so.

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