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Why Jackie Chan’s 2017 movie The Foreigner, a UK-China co-production, was that rare project to offer the best of both worlds
- Jackie Chan plays a Vietnam veteran hunting his daughter’s killers in Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’
- Chan plays a much darker and sadder character than usual, and director Martin Campbell keeps the action low-key
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Why you can trust SCMP
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All too often, the movies co-produced by China and the West turn out to be big, bland blockbusters that offend nobody and entertain only slightly more. For evidence, you need only watch The Meg or The Great Wall. Best not attempt both.
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It may seem counterintuitive, but smaller efforts can be much more effective because they’re not trying so hard to please so many different people.
Starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan, and directed by Martin Campbell, 2017’s The Foreigner is a modest US$35 million UK-China co-production that grossed US$150 million worldwide, including US$81 million in China. It’s also a far better film than its generic title would suggest.
Based on Stephen Leather’s 1992 book, The Chinaman – admittedly, a worse title – it stars Chan as Ngoc Minh Quan, a Nung Chinese Vietnam vet who runs a restaurant in London.
When a terrorist bomb kills his daughter Fan (Katie Leung from the Harry Potter series), Quan travels to Northern Ireland to find the culprits. Here, he’s soon strong-arming the deputy first minister Liam Hennessy (Brosnan), who still has IRA contacts from “the Troubles”, a period of conflict that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998.
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