When I think of Jackie Chan I think of him doing dipsy-doos with chairs and goofing around with Chris Tucker. I don’t think of him as a serious actor, though he turned in a decent performance in The Karate Kid. However, he is going beyond playing Mr. Miyagi in a new film he stars in and co-directed with first time director Zhang Li who worked as director of photography on John Woo’s Red Cliff. The film is titled 1911 and will be released by Well Go USA and Variance Films in limited theaters on October 7.
Starring alongside Chan are Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Lust, Caution), Lee Bing Bing (The Forbidden Kingdom), Winston Chao and Chan’s 28-year-old son Jaycee Chan who voiced Young Monkey on the direct-to-video feature Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five.
The story begins at the beginning of the 20th century with China split into warring factions, the citizens are starving, and recent political reforms have made matters worse, not better. The ruling Qing Dynasty, led by a seven-year-old emperor and his ruthless mother, Empress Dowager Longyu (Chen), is completely out of touch after 250 years of unquestioned power. With ordinary citizens beginning to revolt openly, the Qing Dynasty has created a powerful, modern army (the “New Army”) to quash any rebellion. But weapons are expensive, and desperate for cash, the Qing leaders are trading anything they can get their hands on with foreign countries… and selling China
Check out the trailer below and see what you think. It looks like it has some great imagery, but it’s impossible to gauge how good it will be without a single line of dialogue and just a bunch of epic action shots.
