The Myth

That The Myth eventually turns into an almost interminable experience is a shame, given the light-hearted and genuinely entertaining vibe of the film’s opening hour. Jackie Chan stars as two characters – an Indiana Jones-esque archeologist and a faithful soldier in the Chinese Royal Guard. Director Stanley Tong makes the astonishingly misguided decision to keep the two timelines separate by having all the scenes in the past look slightly squished, a distracting choice that’s entirely unnecessary (even the most moronic viewer would be able to tell the two time periods apart without this silly visual trick). Fortunately, The Myth contains several expectedly impressive action sequences – with a fight set within a rat paper factory an obvious highlight – although it’s not long before such moments wear out their welcome. This is particularly true of an unbelievably tedious plot development towards the end, which finds all of the film’s central characters forced to duke it out inside some kind of an infinite, gravity-defying mausoleum (!) Chan is reportedly looking to get away from some of the sillier films he’s been churning out as of late, but The Myth certainly does not mark a step in the right direction (even some of Chan’s mediocre Hollywood product, eg The Medallion, is more effective than this).

*1/2 out of ****