Chan pulls a few martial arts moves as the elder statesman of an elite security firm working to rescue a Chinese accountant and his wife from kidnappers
Veteran Hong Kong action director Stanley Tong reunites with his longtime star Jackie Chan for this amiable but rather under-par adventure with silly CGI effects. Chan is allowed one or two
comedy moments, but takes a very straight and stately role as Tang, the “elder statesman”-type director of an elite private security firm called Vanguard, presiding over tough, battle-ready and apparently also catwalk-ready young people – and occasionally pulling a few martial arts moves. In his trim three-piece suit and glasses, however, he looks faintly like Ronnie Corbett.
A Chinese accountant and his young wife are kidnapped in London’s Chinatown and Vanguard (with its preposterous HQ full of people wearing phone headsets and gazing at computer screens) is tasked with rescuing him, his wife and his winsome daughter, who is doing laudable conservation work in a nation state referred to initially as “Africa”. She is also vulnerable to abduction as she frolics with CGI big cats in Lion King world. Tang and his crew toughly resolve to rescue their man, while frowning at his supposedly unwitting links with arms dealers, the source of all his woes.