Shanghai Noon

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Shanghai Noon

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Tom Dey
Produced by Jackie Chan
Gary Barber
Roger Birnbaum
Written by Alfred Gough
Miles Millar
Starring Jackie Chan
Owen Wilson
Lucy Liu
Music by Randy Edelman
Cinematography Dan Mindel
Editing by Richard Chew
Distributed by Touchstone Pictures
Spyglass Entertainment
Release date(s) May 26, 2000
Running time 110 min.
Country Flag of the United States
Language English
Mandarin
Sioux
Budget $55 million
Gross revenue $99,274,467
Followed by Shanghai Knights
IMDb profile

Shanghai Noon is a 2000 action-adventure-comedy-western film starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. Directed by Tom Dey, it was written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. The movie, set in Nevada and other parts of the west in the 19th century, is a juxtaposition of a western with a Jackie Chan Kung Fu action movie with extended martial arts sequences. It also has elements of comedy and the "Buddy Cop" film genre, as it involves two men of different personalities and ethnicities (a Chinese imperial guard and a Western outlaw) who team up to stop a crime.

The title (a pun on the Gary Cooper classic High Noon) and several names used in the film pay homage to earlier westerns. Chan's character, "Chon Wang" is meant to sound like John Wayne, and the antagonist, Nathan Van Cleef, is an homage to Lee Van Cleef, who played "the Bad" in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, among other roles in major westerns. In addition, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson's character) reveals at the end that his real name is Wyatt Earp, which Chon laughingly dismisses as "a terrible cowboy name".

A sequel, Shanghai Knights, was released in 2003.

Taglines
The Classic Western Gets A Kick In The Pants.
The old west meets the far east.
The first kung-fu western ever.
Western Action, Eastern Flavor, Won Ton Of Adventure.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) is an imperial guard of China. After Princess Pei-Pei (Lucy Liu), who Wang has affection for, is abducted and taken to the United States, the Emperor of China sends three of his bravest guards to retrieve her. Wang is not among one of the three, but after he tells them that it was his fault the princess was kidnapped, he is sent merely in the hopes that the "foreign devils" would get rid of Wang for China. In Nevada, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson) is an outlaw who, with his gang, hijacks the train Wang is on. When Wallace, a member of Roy's gang, kills Chon's uncle, Chon chases the outlaws down. However, the gang is well-armed and Chon's only choice is to unhinge the cars and get away on the engine. In the process, Wallace takes over the gang from O'Bannon, and they leave him buried up to his chin in the desert sand.

Meanwhile, Pei-Pei, who was tricked into believing she was freely escaping her arranged marriage in China, finds out she has been kidnapped by agent of Lo Fong, who ran away from the Forbidden City and was viewed as a traitor by the Chinese.

When Chon finds Roy buried in the sand, he demands to know the direction to Carson City. Roy tells him that the city is on the other side of a mountain. He puts two chop sticks in Roy's mouth and tells him to dig himself out. When Chon comes out the other side of the mountain, he gets involved with a Native tribe by saving a boy chased by the Crow tribe and ends up reluctantly marrying the tribe chief's daughter, Falling Leaves (Brandon Merrill), after supposedly having sex with her the night before. When he and his new wife get to the next town, she promises him that she will look out for him. Inside a tavern in the town, Chon finds Roy and, in anger, starts a fight with him that turns into a barroom brawl. The two of them get sent to prison, and after they escape (thanks to Falling Leaves), they decide that they will become friends. O'Bannon himself was a little motivated by hearing that there was plenty of the Chinese Emperor's gold being exchanged as a ransom for the princess. Roy trains Wang in the ways of the cowboy and also tells him, in response to Chon's lack of openness, that he is in the West, not the East.

Wang and Roy in a bar brawl
Wang and Roy in a bar brawl

When they get to Carson City, Roy discovers that both he and Wang, now identified as the "Shanghai Kid" are wanted by Lo Fong's ally Marshal Nathan Van Cleef, and the two of them narrowly escape. They go to a hideout, which is more of a burlesque house and after playing a Chinese drinking game in the bathtub, Roy says to a girl massaging him that Chon could never be his friend because Wang is from China. Chon overhears this, and after he knocks out Van Cleef once, the Marshal eventually catches up to him and Roy and arrests them. They find out that Lo Fong is behind the kidnapping of the Princess, and he cuts off Chon's hair (known as a queue or bianzi) so that he loses his honour and can never go back to China. As they are about to be hanged, Chon manages to break himself free from his ropes and after Falling Leaves snipers Roy loose, and their horses, who were planned to bring their coffins in a carriage, destroy the hanging platform and carry them far away from the execution site. Chon tells him Roy that he overheard what he said to the girl about their association, and rides off alone to find the Princess. However, Roy follows Chon and the two reunite when Roy saves Chon from Fong.

The next day, the two partners go to the ransom point, the Carson City Mission church. The three imperial guards come with the gold (Wang had become separated from them during the train robbery), and Lo Fong has the princess's hands and barefeet tied tightly and gagged. However, a simple exchange becomes complicated when Chon, to the surprise of the guards, shows up and Roy points a gun towards Fong. Chon tells his fellow guards that he will not allow them to bring the Princess back to China and that she does not wish to return, although they have been ordered by the emperor to. However, when a guard starts to read the imperial decree, Chon bows in submission to Roy's disdain, but eventually rebuffs the decree by telling the guards that they are in the West, not the East, meaning that the princess shall stay in America. With everything going seemingly fine, things go sour when Van Cleef comes out with two guns and remarks that they have a Mexican standoff without Mexicans. Pei-Pei takes the decree scroll and burns it. As the Chinese fight amongst themselves (Lo Fong included), Van Cleef and O'Bannon wage in a gunfight. After Van Cleef comes close to killing Roy and Roy's bullets go in random places nowhere near the marshal, Van Cleef says he will drop all but one of his bullets, to be fair to Roy, but instead loads two guns and deceives Roy. However, as Van Cleef simultaneous fires both guns, Roy takes his shot and pierces Van Cleef in the heart, and discovers that none of Van Cleef's bullets hit him directly, and he proclaims that he is invincible. As for the Chinese, Lo Fong is strangled by a rope attached to a falling church bell; a joint effort between Chon and Pei-Pei. The Imperial Guards decide that they will let the princess stay.

Wallace and his gang also come up to the church, and demand that Roy and Chon (or The Shanghai Kid as he was called) come out and fight. But when the two of them get outside the church to face Wallace, Natives from all around surround the gang and Wallace asks Roy if he'd like to rejoin the gang, to which Roy responds "I'm just gonna wing it. And you are going to jail."

At at Chinese cultural celebration Roy thanks Falling Leaves for saving him and Chon from danger and that he can't believe he is in love with her because of all their cultural differences, to which Falling Leaves reacts by merely kissing Roy and telling him to shut up because he talks too much. Roy then kisses her back and they engage in a passionate liplock. At the same time, Pei-Pei holds a smiling Chon's hand. At the end of the movie, Roy and Wang are shown as sheriffs and ride off to catch the new band of train robbers.

[edit] Cast

Lucy Liu won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for her role in Shanghai Noon.

[edit] Box office

The movie grossed $99,274,467 according to Box Office Mojo.

[edit] Reception

It was somewhat well received by critics, receiving a composite 67% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Joe Leydon of Variety gave Shanghai Noon a favorable review, characterizing it as "Fast, furious and, quite often, very, very funny."

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The shot of Chon and Roy coming out of the church is a homage to the last shot in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the two protagonists burst through a bullet-riddled door, in slow motion, out towards certain death (as they are surrounded). Except that in this movie, they're saved.
  • The idea that a urine-soaked silk shirt is strong enough to bend the bars of a prison cell when wrapped around them and twisted was tested on episode 26, season 2 of MythBusters. It was determined that the shirt would break long before the bars would in real life. This was also examined mathematically by Hollywood Science, and Open University program, and found to be possible, but with a cotton shirt as opposed to a silk one.
  • The Chinese characters shown in the background during the opening credits are excerpts from a translation of "The Frog Prince."
  • The catchy quote "I don't know karate, but I know karazy" is actually a line from James Brown's song, "The Payback".
  • The Mexican standoff was an homage to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Sheriff Van Cleef is obviously an homage to Lee Van Cleef, who played the villain Angel Eyes (Sentenza, meaning "sentence", in the Italian version) in that film and was involved in its Mexican standoff climax.
  • The hanging scene, in which Chon's wife shoots the noose from Roy's neck is a homage to The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly, indicated by her hat and poncho which are reminiscent of the Man with No Name.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links