The Foreigner

An almost egregiously erratic thriller, The Foreigner follows Jackie Chan’s Quan Ngoc Minh as he embarks on a campaign of revenge after his daughter is killed in a terrorist explosion – with the character’s investigation eventually leading him to the former leader of the Provisional IRA (Pierce Brosnan’s Liam Hennessy). Filmmaker Martin Campbell, working from a script by David Marconi, does a superb job of immediately drawing the viewer into the proceedings, as The Foreigner benefits substantially from the Taken-like storyline surrounding Chan’s not-quite-as-mild-mannered-as-he-seems Quan Ngoc Minh – with Chan delivering a typically solid performance that boasts a number of impressively emotional beats (and, of course, a requisite amount of ass kicking). The problem is, then, that Marconi’s script spends an inordinate (and mostly unwelcome) amount of time on Brosnan’s character and his less-than-engrossing exploits, with the aspect of the narrative, which is rife with subplots, essentially bringing the movie to a dead stop on an all-too-frequent basis and destroying the momentum built up by Chan’s far more exciting and interesting storyline. It’s a shame, really, given the massive potential afforded by the seemingly can’t-miss setup, and although the movie does pick up in its action-packed final stretch (eg there’s a scene involving a bomb at an airport that’s probably the highlight of the entire picture), The Foreigner nevertheless stands as a fairly massive missed opportunity that could (and should) have been so much better.

**1/2 out of ****