Recently At The Cinemas....The Forbidden Kingdom

In Forbidden Kingdom, American teenager Jason (Michael Angarano), who is obsessed with Hong Kong cinema and kungfu classics, finds an antique Chinese staff in a pawn shop: the legendary stick weapon of the Chinese sage and warrior, the Monkey King (Jet Li). With the lost relic in hand, Jason unexpectedly finds himself transported back to ancient China.There, he meets the drunken kungfu master, Lu Yan (Jackie Chan); an enigmatic and skillful Silent Monk (Jet Li); and a vengeance-bent kungfu beauty, Golden Sparrow (Crystal Liu Yi Fei), who lead him on his quest to return the staff to its rightful owner, the Monkey King - imprisoned in stone by the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) for five hundred years. Along the way, while attempting to outmaneuver scores of Jade Warriors, Cult Killers and the deadly White Hair Demoness, Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing), Jason learns about honor, loyalty and friendship, and the true meaning of kungfu, and thus frees himself. ---Synopsis courtesy of IMDB

The Forbidden Kingdom, the much awaited, hyped and trumpeted team up between 2 Asian Screen Icons of Martial Arts Mayhem, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, works exactly where War, another awaited (perhaps not as eagerly) team up between Jason "Transporter" Statham and Jet Li did not. And it works for one simple reason: It delivers exactly what you expect from such a team up: Wall to Wall chop socky, once again via the exquisite choreography of ace fight coordinator Yuen Wo Ping. And that is all one really needs from a flick like this. Fights, fights and more fights.

Balls to the wall scrapes, fisticuffs, wire fu and white knuckle stunts, smoothed over by acrobatic agility. Give me that and you've sold me.

The story? Ah...that's where you'd best pay no mind. It's one part Karate Kid (geeky white kid bullied and beaten up, who then gets a crash course in Kung Fu, courtesy of not one but 2 Mr.Miyagis) and one part Shaolin Kung Fu Flick( if you can picture such flicks where characters not only talk English, but spew American Slang like "Taking a Dump" ) , with liberal poaching of elements from Chinese Kung Fu epics of yore, like the Bride With White Hair, evil warlords and Celestial Gods on top of Chan and Li's Drunken Master and Stoic Monk characters while fights staged in tea houses and bamboo forests are obviously more recent cribbings from newer incarnations like Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's wu xia flicks like Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower.

Such blatant unoriginality can be easily forgiven, especially when Kingdom even delivers that other thing you expect in a Jet/Jackie team up: One scene where the martial maestros go at it. The Jet-Jackie fight, unlike the Jason/Jet one in War, is not over in the blink of an eye and goes on just long enough to be savoured, a comment that can be eaily applied to the whole movie.

And in this age of bloated blockbusters..it is a blessing indeed.