Vanguard 急先锋

Vanguard is a 2020 movie headlined by Jackie Chan.  Meant to be released for the Chinese New Year movie season in Jan 2020, it was eventually released towards the end of 2020 due to the closures of cinemas because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The plot of Vanguard consisted of Jackie Chan's character leading a group of his employees across countries to rescue the daughter of a Chinese businessman.

If there was an equivalent of clickbait for movies, I think this movie totally used Jackie Chan's headlining as a clickbait.  The director Stanley Tong had worked with Jackie Chan on quite a number of movies, most of which were blockbusters.  There would typically be Jackie Chan (and usually another action man from Hong Kong cinemas) headlining the action sequences, exotic locales and supporting cast from different nationalities.  The plots usually didn't make much sense, but the action sequences would have distracted audiences from the (lack of) plot.

Vanguard had the usual Jackie Chan, action sequence, exotic locales and supporting cast from different nationalities.  And the similarities ended there.  The action sequence seemed no longer Jackie Chan's responsibilities, and were instead spread among many younger actors.  There were so many characters that there wasn't sufficient screen time to explain their relationship with each other nor their roles in the movie.  It was merely fight-move to another location-and fight again.  Vanguard was quite obviously targeted for the Chinese market, and unfortunately for audience not familiar with the Chinese entertainment scene, other than Jackie Chan, the remaining Chinese faces in the movie all blurred into one indistinguishable face.  And then again it could just be me, being unable to identify actors and actresses in TVB dramas despite seeing them in multiple dramas.

Dubai was one identifiable locale where the movie was shot.  And I thought the river scene reminded me of Taiwan.  There were so many locales in the movie it again became one huge blur of nothingness.

And nothingness would be a word I would describe this movie.  When the movie ended, I realized nothing stood out and nothing left a deep impression.  

Or maybe something did.  One of the actors said something preachy like you speak our language but you do not understand our culture.  That could go either way.