Jackie Chan kicks a lot of ass in this, as he is known to do. But unlike a sadsack pathetic excuse of a movie like Face/Off, this one is actually enjoyable to watch. Plot could be better, but at least it has some character and comedy laced throughout so it aint’ just a bunch of guys causing horrendous amounts of damage to each other’s faces, arms and bodies while using the abundance of found hurty articles around them. Which seem to involve a lot of fire in this one. That...can’t feel good.
A father is returning home via train after a trip abroad collecting various ingredients like ginger, accompanied by his son and somewhat tarded servant. Their words, not mine. I think. Those weird subtitles are a bitch to read so there may be a translation oddity there. Anyways, his son (the not tarded one), played by Jackie Chan, seems to be a bit of a scamster and cheater, your typical rebel miscreant 40-year-old youth. Because of his love of not paying taxes to the Authori-tah, it winds him up into a bad case of missing ginger and drunken fightins. Bad combo. And it causes an increasingly bad situation trying to cover to both his father and the asshats that want to resolve the case of the Swapped Ginger.
No doubts, all great and relatively organic martial arts fighting (to use the most generic of the term, sue me, I’m not a martial artsisan). The fight sequences are pretty abundant here after the initial set-up, and quite a few unique moves given the Drunken Master title. I don’t want to brag, but I can totally fight like this when I’m drunk. My first move is usually so genius it either makes my opponent back away in complete abject fear, or I never get in a second move because I’m “sleeping” on the pavement with a black eye and an awful snores. Good times. Not quite as good as this one though, which has great choreography and cinematography throughout.
