Folks, this is the kind of bad movie that I can get behind. Vanguard is a delightful disaster. Although the action is disappointing for a movie starring Jackie Chan, the film is so inept that its almost charming. From the editing to the performances to the special effects (which I will dwell on shortly), Vanguard feels like some fifth graders wrote to Jackie Chan asking him to be in their homemade movie and he actually showed up in their backyard for the shoot. It may be terrible, but the surprisingly large number of people in that theater with me had a fucking magical evening with it.
Jackie Chan plays the head of a super top secret security agency named Vanguard that is basically the Chinese version of the IMF in the Mission: Impossible films. They aren’t fucking around either; these people are so top secret that they put their logo on their fucking cars. Anyway, some important businessman’s daughter is kidnapped because he pissed off some terrorists and Vanguard has to get her back and stop the terrorists and blah blah generic action plot. I honestly don’t remember much about the story other than that it wasn’t interesting; I checked my watch at one point thinking that the movie was about to end and realized that there was an hour left. That should tell you that I had no idea where this was going or why. The biggest mystery of the plot is why Jackie Chan only owns one suit. He could be in a big shootout in the desert, then he returns to his office and he is still wearing the same suit the next day. This consumed me. Get the man a new fucking suit.
Screw the plot, though, the real draw here is the special effects. I know that I have complained about computer effects before, but I learned something about myself watching Vanguard: Bad computer effects make me angry, but truly, stunningly awful computer effects fill my heart with joy. I’m a complicated man, you see. There is a big section of this movie that takes place in Africa and the entire audience erupted with laughter every time a lion or hyena appeared on screen. I now feel a kinship with every person in that theater because of the collective joy that we shared at the sheer technical incompetence on the screen. If you thought that the remake of The Lion King looks terrible, imagine if that film was rendered with a Sega Saturn and you are close to the shitshow of Vanguard. I actually almost edited that last sentence because I felt it was too insulting to the Saturn.
It doesn’t stop there, though. The car chases, oh good god, the car chases. I can assure you that nobody was hurt filming these car chases because at no point was an actual car on an actual road. Anytime a chase happens, the film clearly switches from an actual car to a computer-generated one. It’s like watching a real car one moment and then it suddenly switches to somebody playing Crazy Taxi (let’s keep those Sega references rolling for some reason!). There is a big final car chase through a mall that reminded me of The Blues Brothers, except that there were clearly no fucking cars in the actual fucking mall. It’s amazing that, in the 40 years since The Blues Brothers, special effects and stuntwork have actually regressed to this point. That would normally make me sad, but I was too busy laughing at the 64-bit cars that I’m supposed to believe are in the real world.
There are technical shenanigans other than the effects, too. For instance, whoever edited this thought that they were editing a sitcom for some reason. Every 20 minutes or so, it would fade out as if it was going to commercial. It could be right in the middle of a shot, then commercial break. Then it would fade back in, go to an exterior establishing shot of a building, then resume the film. Who the fuck does that? Why the fuck am I watching a movie in a theater that fades to commercial breaks like its an episode of Full fucking House?
Additionally, the film is a Chinese production and the languages in the film are mixed, so there are both English and Chinese subtitles throughout. That’s fine, I don’t mind subtitles (two of my favorite films of the last decade, Parasite and One Cut of the Dead, are subtitled). However, I would prefer if the entire film was in Chinese because the people speaking English clearly can’t actually speak English. Or they are being directed by somebody that can’t speak English. Either way, their inflection and tone completely mismatch their lines as if there are just sounding out whatever words are given to them. These people could be threatening to murder your family, but sound like they are offering you a cheese doodle. It’s both annoying and oddly bold in how terrible it is at something as basic as speaking lines.
I will say, though, that the action scenes are disappointing. Jackie Chan is getting old, but I was still hoping for something less generic than the basic, uninspired kung fu scenes on display here. In the mid 90s, Jackie Chan would have smacked a real lion in the face with a frying pan and then backflipped off the side of a mountain. Here, he just runs from a lion created on a Commodore 64 and throws a few punches, nothing special. I will give props, though, to the random guy that keeps popping up flying on some sort of hover board during the action scenes. I don’t mean a Marty McFly hover board, either, I mean this guy is zipping around like the goddamn Silver Surfer. I don’t who that guy is or why he has a hover board from the future or why he is the only person that has one, but I appreciate him.
This movie is poorly-made garbage and I recommend it. It may not be as batshit insane as Chan’s early work (if you haven’t seen Fantasy Mission Force, you need to do that immediately), but it makes up for it through good, old-fashioned incompetence. Get some friends, get some beers, make sure to have several beers before starting the movie and then enjoy the shit out of this thing.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_(film)#/media/File:Vanguard_poster.jpg
