Shanghai Knights (2003)

Shanghai Knights arrives as the second installment of a franchise that understood its assignment: pair a Chinese martial artist with a drawling American, point them at Victorian London, and let the furniture absorb the damage. The cultural arithmetic is notable mostly for how unremarkable it feels. Jackie Chan headlines, Fann Wong holds her own as the sister with a blade and a grudge, and Donnie Yen lends his customary menace to the periphery. For 2003, that is an international cast carrying a studio comedy. It also arises from the premise, which is to say nobody had to twist an arm to put Asian performers in a movie about China. The distinction matters.

Chon Lin is the closest the film comes to a statement. She tracks her father's killer across continents, fights beside the men, and arranges most of her own escapes. Then the screenplay hands her to Roy O'Bannon's romantic fixation and lets the matter rest. The Boxer uprising, the imperial seal, the scheming Wu Chow: all of it is set dressing for slapstick and revenge. A Chinese protagonist navigating the British class system is a promising foundation for commentary. The film declines to build on it. What it does build is a running gag in which a young pickpocket turns out to be Charlie Chaplin and Inspector Artie Doyle invents Sherlock Holmes on the spot. History gets rearranged for a laugh, not for an argument.

Elsewhere the picture is content to be a genial crowd-pleaser and nothing more. Roy's squandered fortune is a punchline about a man who cannot hold onto money, not an indictment of anything. There is no romantic subtext beyond the heterosexual variety, no environmental hand-wringing, no meditation on bodies or brains, no sermonizing of any stripe. The closing beat, a message from a dead father about the importance of family, is the full extent of the moral instruction on offer. It lasts perhaps ten seconds. We should be grateful for small mercies.