THE FOREIGNER - ***/*****

By Porothy Darker

Is “chinaman” a slur? I feel like I’ve been conditioned to think of it as one, but maybe in other parts of the english-speaking world it’s just how you refer to men from china - kind of like “redskin” for native americans here. Wikipedia says it’s “potentially contentious,” so I guess it depends on who you ask. I, for one, appreciated its liberal use in this movie. The Foreigner looks pretty rad in the previews - it’s Jackie Chan doing some cool shit, old James Bond being all menacing, and guns - but ultimately fails to deliver. In fact, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve more or less seen everything worth seeing in the movie.

I was pretty excited that the IRA was the villian/terrorist organization of record in this movie. I feel like the IRA used to get a lot more run as an evil organization in Hollywood, so this was a little nostalgic. I had assumed from the trailers that it would be some ISIS garbage like we’ve seen 1000 times, and that Pierce Brosnan would be some high-faluting banker helping them launder their money - that he played a politician who used to do some heinous shit to people (and went to prison for it) was much better. His accent, on the other hand, was not. I realized when I was watching the movie that not all english (read as scottish, irish, british, etc.) accents are the same, and that Pierce Brosnan playing an irishman might mean that he couldn’t totally mail in his performance. Unfortunately, his accent, especially the violent outbursts, sounded like someone doing a Sean Connery impression. What’s that you say? Sean Connery is Scottish? Exactly. I think the best part about his character is his coniving, nephew-fucking, hates-that-her-husband-is-a-pussy-politician-now wife. You can really tell that she used to love and respect him, but now utterly despises him - I wanted to see more of her.

Again, if you’ve seen the trailers, you know most of the notes of the plot - old Chinese guy’s daughter is killed as an innocent bystander in a terrorist attack, and he just so happens to have the requisite skills to find, and kill, the killers. Kind of like Taken, but with more kung-fu and less torture (but still some torture). In addition to liberal use of “chinaman,” the movie takes advantage of the opportunity to make an “all asians are terrible drivers” joke early on, which I think is the only intentionally funny scene in the film.

I want to say that Jackie Chan looks old. I mean, he IS old, but he’s held up remarkably well, and (I assume) performs some admirable stunt work. None of it is anything we haven’t seen before, except that it is, because we haven’t seen a *63 year-old* do that kind of stunt work before. For that reason (age), I think it’s understandable that the stunts were fairly limited - I just wish I hadn’t seen them all months before I saw the movie, but, hey, they’re trying to sell tickets.

The Foreigner isn’t a bad movie by any stretch. It’s incredibly formulaic, but there are some scenes worth watching - thankfully they went with an R rating, because it would have been terrible otherwise. Had Pierce Brosnan been better, or had more to work with, it may have been good. He wasn’t, and didn’t, though. 3 out of 5 stars.