Ever since Jackie Chan's rendezvous with Hollywood in Cannonball Run (1981) (which incidentally was advertised in Hong Kong as Jackie "co-starring with Bert Reynolds"), he has been true to his unique brand of action part comedy, part choreography, part acrobat but never true martial arts such as what Jet Li delivers. (A remote analogy of the Sphinx part woman, part beast, part god - but nothing of a man in it). And this went on for what seem like an eternity, both in local and Hollywood productions. Then, approaching mid-life, Chan started to try new things e.g. pure romance in "Bo lei jun" (or "Glass bottle") (1999) and pathos in "New Police story" (2004).
In "The Myth", he takes things even further, by giving us both an old clowning around Jackie Chan and a new all serious Jackie Chan, in two parallel stories, present and ancient. Good intentions and efforts notwithstanding, Chan's portrayal of a general of woeful countenance in the ancient Qin dynasty is just not convincing, maybe because of things as a simple as his stature or that his face is too familiar. As a result, the love story on which obvious emphasis has been placed never quite gets off the ground. What we are left with then is pretty much the old Jackie Chan flick. Still, with the multi billion dollar (HK$) budget, an international cast and some pretty clever ideas (as the "rat glue factory scene" everybody mentioned), this movie IS entertaining. As well, although the "historical" portion is not exactly a resounding success, it does add another dimension to the movie.
One final note at half-century point, Jackie Chan finally yields a bit on his resistance to wire work and CGI. While we are all proud of his steadfast determination to do all the dangerous stunts himself, the laws of nature dictate that there are things that you just can't go on doing forever.
