Prior to the July 11^th 2008 cinematic release, Andrew Saroch recently attended a secret London Press Screening for Screen Power & Jade Screen (lucky boy!) and here is what he thought….

It seemed as if it would never happen. There was endless speculation, countless false dawns and projects that never quite got off terra firma. Nevertheless, fans finally have the dream-teaming of Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same production, a Hollywood blockbuster no less.

Jackie had no real peers in his chosen genre throughout the 1980s, with even Sammo’s redoubtable cinematic reputation positively quaking in its boots as it faced its younger ‘brother’s box office clout. Yet the early 90s saw a true rival for Jackie’s tickets sales with Jet Li putting together a string of big hits that made him a major player in Hong Kong cinema. From the first three ‘Once Upon A Time In China’ films to the two ‘Fong Sai Yuk’ hits, Li rode the new-wave kung-fu boom with frightening precision; people were then either Jackie fans or Jet aficionados and the two camps would regularly throw rocks at each other.

Hong Kong cinema’s subsequent recession and the gradual encroachment of Hollywood on the local market meant that, for the first time, a Jackie and Jet vehicle seemed like a definite possibility, maybe even a necessary one. All of us held our breath - no mean feat for over a decade - yet nothing emerged and two of Asia greatest performers focused their interests on breaking the U.S. market.

Chan and Li are now well enough established in Tinsel town for their collaboration in ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ to be eagerly anticipated in the West as much as it is in the East. To this end, their first feature together unsurprisingly uses another universally popular feature - the Chinese legend of the Monkey King - as the basis for its story, though enough other allusions to figures of the martial world are made to please genre lovers.

What will surely have surprised not to say worried viewers was the man chosen to direct and what his inclusion said about the production’s target audience. Rob Minkoff for child-friendly fare such as ‘Stuart Little’ and ‘The Haunted Mansion’. Now I’d be the first to admit giving way to a few ‘ahhhs’ and exclamations of ‘he’s so delightful’ when I watched Stuart Little, but was the man behind the lens really the man to bring the two masters together after such an agonising wait?

Minkoff borrows quite shamelessly from Wolfgang Peterson’s ‘The Never-Ending Story’, perhaps safe in the knowledge that ‘Forbidden Kingdom’s target audience are too young to remember the original and probably think it’s more a description of ‘Lost’ than a popular kids film. Minkoff’s movie begins in present-day Boston with floppy-haired teenager Jason Tripitikas waking up from a prophetic dream in his kung-fu shrine of a bedroom. This neatly moves into a credit sequence that is one of ‘Forbidden Kingdom’s main highlights. That sounds like feint praise, but it’s quite a joyous moment to see Jason’s numerous film posters come to life as the ‘Enter The Dragon’-esque music plays. Lau Kar Leung’s seminal ‘Legendary Weapons Of China’ pops up (Shaw Brothers addicts will have to excuse the shameless pun) is used as are countless other greats from the Jade Screen, an inspired piece of design that will gain appreciative nods from kung-fu flick fans.

This excellent sequence - having left a reverential grin on my dopey face - concluded, the narrative switches to Jason’s friendship with elderly pawnshop owner Old Hop (Jackie looking like the mummified David Lo Pan in ‘Big Trouble In Little China’). Jason plunders the shop for old kung-fu films while Old Hop reproves him for being ‘another white boy who wants to be Chinese’. This shard of contentment is in stark contrast to the teenager’s school life where he is bullied relentlessly by thug Lupo and his witless minions. Lupo - built from granite with brains to match - uses Jason as his own personal anger management doll and uses his brawn to force him to get into Old Hop’s store after dark.

The senior citizen allows Jason into the shop, but is ill-prepared for Lupo’s gang sneaking in behind and sifting through his precious goods. When Old Hop tries to intervene, Lupo shocks even Jason by pulling out a gun and shooting the venerable old boy where he stands. Jason grabs hold of a mysterious gold staff that his friend had explained was left in the shop many years ago awaiting ’the rightful owner’ and brushes a few of the gang aside before running up the stairs and onto the roof. Jason, trembling with fear, is cornered by the now psychotic Lupo who threatens to add the teenagers death to his list of dubious night-time pursuits if he doesn’t agree to ignore Old Hop’s demise. The staff then proves to have a mind of its own and throws Jason off the roof and tumbling to the concrete ground below.

Tripitikas awakens in a small hut in the mountainous Jade Kingdom and is baffled by what everyone is saying and doing. His introduction to the ancient world is sharply disturbed by the intervention of the hordes of the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) who pillage the countryside and enslave those they find. Jason, staff still in hand, is surrounded by the troops who bark questions at him in Mandarin and gesticulate aggressively. Into this awkward scene comes a drunken beggar, Lu Yan (Jackie returning with a wink to his inebriated past glories), who stumbles into the soldiers, enrages them and then quickly dispatches them utilising the fabled ‘Drunken Fist’. After saving Jason, Lu Yan takes him under his intoxicated wing and off to one of those rowdy restaurants that are forever burnt into the minds of anyone with a love of the ‘Jade Screen’. With the pole enabling Jason to suddenly understand the language spoken and reply likewise, Lan Yu explains the probable reason for the newcomer’s incredible appearance in the mythical world.

In between copious mouthfuls of wine, the beggar tells Jason about the pole’s disappearance after the Monkey King (Jet Li) had been tricked into relinquishing it during a duel with the tyrannical Jade Warlord. The Monkey King was turned into a stone stature adorning the Warlord’s palace which is also home to an elixir that grants immortality to those that drink it. Only when the staff is returned to its owner can the dictatorship be ended and peace be brought back to the land and perhaps the stranger to the land from whence he came.

Lan Yu finishes his discourse, promptly tells his young companion that he hasn’t got a penny to his name and watches as the Jade army marches into the restaurant to arrest Jason. Lan Yu eventually decides to help, but the duo are only able to escape the clutches of the soldiers with some timely intervention from the beautiful ‘Golden Sparrow’ (Liu Yifei). The newly-formed trio disappear into the night while worrying words of their rebellion gets back to the Jade Warlord who dispatches the cold-hearted (though, let’s be honest equally gorgeous) bounty hunter Ni Kuang (Li Bingbing) to apprehend them.

Golden Swallow joins the heroes on their trek through the desert and tells them that the death of her parents were due to the Jade Warlord, a reason that she is eager to accompany them. While the initially stoic avenger befriends Jason, Lan Yu agrees to teach him kung-fu as they continue their journey and puts him through all of the lovingly torturous training that we all demand of our martial arts classics. The arduous routine is interrupted when a horse backed figure clad in white steals the sacred staff and hides at an abandoned temple. Lan Yu decides to investigate and discovers that the thief is an apparently mute monk (Jet Li once again) with mysterious motives. What follows is the moment that fans of both stars will have awaited for what seems like aeons: fisticuffs between two undisputed masters of their craft. A protracted and furiously executed fight ensues, but eventually they reach an impasse. The monk reveals himself to be a seeker of justice and a willing addition to the team, though his rivalry with his drunken colleague continues to fester under the surface.

In a shameless display of muscle-flexing, both the monk and Lan Yu decide to teach Jason which only doubles the misery for the youngster. A considerable salve for his painful training is his blossoming romance with the emotionally-timid Golden Swallow and they discover how similar their backgrounds really are despite the obvious cultural gulf. Once again a moment of calm is disturbed though this time it is Ni Kuang who does the honours, launching her underlings at the quartet as they struggle to escape. They reach their horses and wriggle free from the legions sent to kill them, but one carefully aimed arrow from the white-haired femme fatale leaves Lan Yu mortally wounded. The inebriated one is taken up to a nearby monastery to recover, yet his wounds look too serious for him to survive the evening. The glimmer of hope offered to the distraught Jason is the immortality elixir kept at the Jade Warlord’s fortress though the monk implores him to wait a few days before attacking. Though just seventeen, the foreigner decides to sneak out of the monastery and beg the notorious Jade Warlord to trade the coveted staff for the life-giving liquid. Naturally the dictator is hardly the kind of man who can be trusted and leaves Jason to the mercy of Ni Kuang.

‘Forbidden Kingdom’ is a strange hybrid of a film. Not only does it pick n’ mix its Chinese inspirations, it also tries to be a film targeted at the young while also having some relatively - and I do stress ’relatively’ - brutal fight sequences. It’s undeniably strange to see a production based around Chinese legends and literary sources, using Asian actors who are communicating using their second language. Yet RobMinkoff’s film is not quite the disaster I had initially feared on hearing of the casting and the talent behind the lens. It is a case of getting a Chinese square peg hammered to fit that very uniform Hollywood round hole, something that long-standing Jackie/Jet fans will be resigned for anyway.

It would appear that Minkoff and his scribe John Fusco have an appreciation for the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema, the wry allusions to some of the works of this period are particularly pleasing. Jason throws references to everything from ‘Ten Tigers Of Kwantung’ to ‘Tekken 2’ into his conversation and amusingly baffles Lan and his cohorts. Operating on the idea of culture-clash is where the film proves to be at its most endearing with the viewer able to appreciate that the reluctant hero is still just an ordinary kid. Unfortunately the majority of the script is full of lazy tautology, something that seems to curse any Asian actor appearing in a Hollywood production these days. ‘It is said…’ appears to be the first line out of everyone’s mouth while much of the verbal sparring between villain and heroes is so cliched it makes our beloved dubbed kung-fu films of the 70s sound like they were scripted by Harold Pinter.

The other problem with Fusco’s script is that it never allows the characters of Chan’s Lan Yu and Li’s monk to develop their own personality. A few exchanges between them raise a smile though the contrast between the two is frustratingly underplayed. The wise old drunk should be a natural progression for Jackie Chan thirty years after rising to prominence playing the illustrious pupil of Beggar So. Sadly he isn’t provided with a suitable opportunity to imbue his role with the quirks and eccentricities that made So one of the genre’s most beloved heroes. This was a golden opportunity to point to the future for Chan, showing that, aside from the anticipated move into drama, he still has a valuable role to play in the kind of movies that made his name. Instead, Lan Yu is a likeable character though not really a memorable one.

Fusco also sells Jet Li short, making his two roles somewhat bland. Li as Monkey King appears briefly at the beginning and at the end, yet it his role as the heroic monk that proves to be a waste of his talents. It seems the Hollywood way to pigeon-hole Li as the flint-headed, emotionless fighting machine with little beyond the most primary emotions and this is unfortunately continued in ‘Forbidden Kingdom’. Jet Li fans may continue to be disappointed that, with all of the progress he made in the early-90s as a screen star with his own particular presence, he is now being used as ‘Asian Thug 1#’.

One thing the makers of ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ are very well aware of - aside from the fact that any teaming of Li and Chan is going to create a cinematic stir all over the world - is that Asian influences are as important behind the lens as in front of it. That most illustrious of Asian cinematographers, Peter Pau, is given ample opportunity to create a visual beauty that add to the mythology of the tale. While it may not go into journals as his most resplendent work, Pau still knows how to utilise the environment; with the incredible locations wisely used by production team, it would have been difficult to contemplate a lesser cinematographer under-using such breath-taking natural resources.

Although this is seen as a ‘Jackie Chan & Jet Li’ partnership, Yuen Woo Ping’s name on the credits will have been as exciting to fans as the two main stars. The legendary choreographer throws his influence onto the screen with a plethora of intricate moments of combat between the characters. Nothing quite lives up to his greatest achievements, but with neither he nor the lead pair as sprightly as they once were, this isn’t a surprise or disappointment. Action fans will enjoy the restaurant fight between Jason, Lan Yu and the Jade Warlord’s masses while the obvious nod to that great kung-fu staple - food n’ fighting - will not be lost on anyone.

The early battles are, of course, a precursor to the main event - Jackie Chan vs. Jet Li. Taking part nearly halfway into the film, this extended duel in an abandoned temple is expertly realised by all involved. Was it worth the near-two decade wait? Almost. Chan and Li look as good going toe-to-toe as they probably have since their careers went Stateside, though the fact that neither are near their prime anymore does niggle throughout. Any of these criticisms cannot be levelled at ‘Forbidden Kingdom’, it’s just a matter of nature finally wearing away at two distinguished superstars, something none of us ever dreamed could happen. Yet for the most part they defy their limitations and throw their all into the scene; it seems petty for me, a thirty year old who groans like an octagenarian every time I have to bend down to tie my shoe-laces, to keep harping on about their ’advanced years’ . It remains the stand-out moment of the whole film, even overshadowing the finale. If one moment implores fans across the world to see it - as much for its place in celluloid history as anything else - it is this superb ten minute sequence.

‘Forbidden Kingdom’ doesn’t ignite in the same way after this aforementioned confrontation. The chemistry between Chan and Li is under-developed while cliches take over from the pent-up excitement of the earlier clash. Minkoff keeps the pace rollicking along at the detriment of the overall cohesion, pushing things forward when some quiet contemplation would have been welcome. There’s barely a breather from Jason’s entry into the past to his return to the present. This quicksilver charge through every part of the narrative is another hint that this is primarily aimed at younger audiences. Not that moments of character-development are diametrically opposed to children’s entertainment, but Hollywood producers dare not let their big-budget dream machines pause for even a moment. Jason’s nascent love for Golden Swallow would have benefited from more time as their fledgling relationship could have been more charming than it was predictable.

The long wait for us all to watch Jackie Chan and Jet Li together on the big screen is over and, while ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ offers mixed results, we probably all delighted its finally happened. Where either man goes from here is open to discussion, but with Jackie’s much-touted dramatic departure for director Derek Yi coming very soon, there’s a great deal to look forward to. Despite a good performance here, Li Bingbing’s Hollywood career will likely never be anything more than the beautiful, yet dangerous fighting femme that the majority of Asian actresses are stuck doing in the West. Rob Minkoff’s film will do little for her or Liu Yifei, but at least he gives them work they can both be proud of.

Ultimately, this is a very awkward and mismatched blockbuster that wastes many of its assets. Nevertheless, there are enough moments of genuine interest to ensure that ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ is mostly engaging throughout. A better script and a more patient direction could have yielded something much more memorable.