Mark Reviews Movies: VANGUARD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 19, 2020

Vanguard is a very silly movie about a private international security firm, as its agents try to stop at least two terrorist groups from committing assorted abductions, executions, and acts of war. Can such serious stuff be presented as silly? Of course, it can. Does writer/director Stanley Tong know how silly a movie he has made? That's debatable.

Surely, Jackie Chan, the movie's "star," does. Chan is reliable that way. Even as his proclivity for spectacular and death-defying stunts has disappeared, the actor has maintained the charm that really made those stunts so special.

He doesn't have much to do here as Tang Huating, the head of the eponymous security firm. Chan throws a few punches, uses pistols and rifles as clubs, and does a couple of jumps, but most of the wilder sequences, either from him or the ensemble of co-stars, are accomplished with some obvious visual effects. A younger Chan might have dodged a real lion in his glory days. In this movie, he evades a very digital lion shortly after someone calls out, "They're real lions!" They are, most certainly, not real lions.

We could discuss the unfortunate trajectory of Chan's current career, trapped to be cast in various action movies, even as his very wise refusal to do the kinds of stunts that made him an international superstar continues, simply because he is an action legend. What would be the point, though?

The man has made his decision. The roles keep coming. Chan continues to take them, and we should at least be glad that he approaches all these projects with a knowing wink and a sly grin. One of the few good and intentional jokes in Tong's movie has Chan's character approach the railing of a mall balcony. He has just seen his cohorts in action leap from the height to the ground below, and just before Chan jumps, a local cop stops him. "The stairs are over there," the cop yells. Without a second thought, Chan's character takes up the cop on his offer for a much safer route.

Tong and Chan have worked together several times, both before and after the star's decision to limit the extremeness of his stunt work, and that gag works, because Chan is acknowledging his limitations, Tong is playing with our knowledge of that fact, and both of them are in on the joke. We see that scene and start to wonder: Is this whole movie as intentionally, knowingly funny as this moment? It's funny, to be sure, but not, it seems, with a recognition for how ridiculous it actually is.

The plot, for one thing, is far too complicated for something that's just intended to be a gag. Chan and his team, made up of Lei (Yang Yang) and Miya (Mu Qimiya) and Kaixuan (Lun Ai), have to protect an accountant (played by Jackson Lou), who laundered assets from a Middle Eastern terrorist and then gave up the bad guy's location to the American military, and his daughter Fareeda (Xu Ruohan), an animal rights activist on safari in Africa (That's how the lions come into this). The story hops around the globe—from London, to Africa, to a fortress in the Middle East, to Dubai—and reveals enemy after enemy, threat after threat, and action sequence after action sequence.

It's pretty typical stuff, really, but along the way, we're never quite certain if the movie's cartoon-ish elements (Some of the gems include the digital lions, drone bees and a pigeon, an amphibious jeep, a hover board, and golden cars that move with the stiff precision of cheap computer effects) are a joke or are intended to be taken as seriously as its overloaded plot. Again, they're funny, but are we laughing at a sincere but poorly devised and executed attempt at a serious action movie or laughing with Tong and company as they go to as many extremes as possible for a gag?

One could argue that the laughter is enough evidence for a joke, either intentional or accidental, but there's so much here that isn't funny, isn't ludicrous, and isn't particularly interesting, too. Everything outside of the action is played with sincerity and/or severity, including a moment when the entire security office stops their investigation to celebrate an agent's birthday, even as one of their own is being held captive and threatened with beheading (Check your priorities, people). That moment alone is enough proof of the lack of tone awareness in Vanguard, so maybe that one good joke on the balcony is just that: one good joke in a joke of a movie.

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