Shanghai Noon

Herald rating: * * *

Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson

Director: Tom Dey

Rating: PG, (medium level violence)

Running time: 110 minutes

Screening: Village, Hoyts and Berkeley cinemas

Review: Russell Baillie

The French film beat this one to the title East West but, of course, that dopey pun is all the more suitable for the latest in Hong Kong star Jackie Chan's stateside action-comedy franchise.

It's not the last pun either - Chan's character, a hapless forbidden city guard, who ends up on a royal rescue mission in the old west, is named Chon Wang (say it out loud). Nor is that the last attempt at spoofery of old Westerns or of genre cliches ticking off the bar brawl, the train robbery (it all goes a bit Crunchie Bar advert in that particular sequence) and leaping from rooftops on to trusty steeds below.

All of which helps the slight plot be not just the connective tissue for Chan's fight sequences. There's also plenty of room for newcomer Wilson, playing a likeable gunslinging goofball, to deliver the best lines which aren't in broken English.

Wilson, previously seen as one of the crew in that cosmic comedy Armageddon, is a chap to watch obviously, especially as he wrote the brilliant though little-seen Rushmore.

Their partnership makes the movie, especially in one scene where both men are in separate baths indulging in the silliest of drinking games that proves the movie's giggliest moment.

Oh and the kidnapped Princess? That's the decorative Liu who gets to empathise with the down-trodden Chinese railway workers during her captivity but not much else.

As for Chan, it must be said that Chan's not quite the insurance risk he's proved in past movies - maybe age and his old x-rays are catching up with him. But still he pulls off some inventively funny fisticuffs throughout.

Add the charms of the setting and Chan's supporting players, those bad puns and good stunts and Shanghai Noon ends up achieving precisely what it and Chan headed west to do: be reliably silly entertainment.