SHANGHAI KNIGHTS

CAST: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Aaron Johnson,Thomas Fisher, Aidan Gillen, Fann Wong, Donnie Yen, Oliver Cotton

DIRECTOR: David Dobkin

"There isn't a minute of ‘Shanghai Knights’ that didn'thave me grinning. …It's a fantasy of London culled from history and literature and pop culture, all our Anglophile fantasies mushrooming in one place like a daydream run amok…It's thoroughly commercial but made without a trace of cynicism. Seeing that sort of mainstream movie can give you a lift; it can, for a while at least, wash you clean of feeling jaded." --Charles Taylor, Salon

"…lazy and resolutely witless follow-up to the comic western ‘Shanghai Noon’…Loving Jackie Chan has always been easy, which is why it would be nice if he could find better material in which to bask in his long-sought American stardom or, alternately, ease into bad movies as effortlessly as his co-star. With a zonked-out Zen vibe and a twangy singsong that suggests he only that minute laid aside his bong, Wilson isn't begging for our devotion. He's just inviting us to the nonstop party going on in his head." --Manohla Dargis, The Los Angeles Times

"Chan keeps earning our good will even when the material is beneath him…The director, David Dobkin, and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, want to conjure the slaphappy tone of Hope and Crosby or Abbott and Costello pictures. But you don't achieve any tone, even ‘slaphappy,’ simply by slapping things together…All that fuses this film's rickety parts is Chan's immense amiability as a presence and his go-for-broke ingenuity and enthusiasm as an artist." --Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

"‘Shanghai Knights’ reunites the inspired team of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson for a rollicking follow-up to ‘Shanghai Noon’ that's even more fun than the 2000 original…Mostly, this is an excuse--at times, a somewhat flimsy one--for spectacular action stunts by Chan, in his most inspired work in years, and verbal riffs by Wilson, who is developing into of the funniest performers in movies today." --Lou Lumenick, The New York Post

"If you've seen many Jackie Chan films, you won't find much to excite or surprise you here…The in-joke mania becomes so cutesy that it smells of desperation, like the filmmakers thought that if they threw enough Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chaplin references against the wall, a few of them might stick…Wow-'em stunts plus zippy interplay plus abundant good vibes equal top-notch Jackie Chan. Silly puns and self-conscious pop-culture references do not." --Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune

"Plot, as usual, is convoluted, and the least of the movie's concerns: Banter and comedic riffs, interspersed by explosions of martial artistry, are what matter…In place of darting and leaping moves, Jackie Chan is now perfecting a stay-put style no less inventive in its construction… His is a talent not so much cooling down as getting cool in middle age. And, it turns out, his is just the right temperature for light entertainment on a long winter's movie night." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"…Chan's best and giddiest movie since the original ‘Shanghai Noon’…It's true that the 47-year-old Chan is slowing down a bit, but he's still very impressive. And ‘Shanghai Knights’ clearly presents him as he wants to be seen: as a comic artist with a gift for movement, not a violent fighter-type." --Jeffrey M. Anderson, San Francisco Examiner