The Foreigner Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Pierce Brosnan, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even if it was nothing really amazing, I thought it was still a decent watch. The weird thing is that it was, in fact, not one movie but two movies combined together somehow. The first one was basically a ‘Taken’ knock-off starring Jackie Chan in the role that suddenly transformed Liam Neeson into action star overnight but Chan was actually really convincing. Indeed, I always loved Jackie Chan doing some crazy stunts but, even though they might be popular, I always dreaded all his jokes and it was actually neat to see the Hong Kong legend finally involved in some darker material. I was rather impressed how well he adjusted himself to the R rated stuff even if, for most of the duration, his character was actually stuck staying ‘Names?’ to pretty much everyone that crossed his path. The 2nd movie-within-the movie was basically a political thriller involving Pierce Brosnan who was also quite convincing as well playing a seasoned tough politician. I wish they did give more background information explaining how a former IRA terrorist somehow ended up being filthy rich during the 30 years after he quit fighting. Anyway, even though both stories worked fairly well as stand-alone, unfortunately, mixing them was turned out to be rather awkward. Basically, each side of the story constantly cannibalized the other one. For example, if they would focus on Pierce Brosnan’s character and his political intrigues for a while, Jackie Chan’s character would then completely disappear for too long. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.