HE'S not looking for trouble. He's wearing it. So runs the remit for the new Jackie Chan movie, and the item in question is a tuxedo - Armani, darling - that is more than the latest in nocturnal fashion.
This hi-tech apparel has a mind of its own, as East meets West, Jackie Chan meets The Man From UNCLE and martial arts meet haute couture.
Kevin Donovan's daft but inoffensive weekend-popcorn movie is a comedy caper cum thriller, playing a less than subtle riff on James Bond movies by casting Asian action man Chan as Jimmy Tong (as in "the name's Tong, James Tong").
Tong is a New York cabbie, who thinks nothing of driving the wong way down a street to beat the traffic jams. Those skills lead to him being hired as the new chauffeur to playboy millionaire Clark Devlin (a devilishly suave Jason Isaacs), but appropriately for someone called Clark, he's leading a double life, as a secret agent. When Clark is put out of commission by a car-bomb explosion, Wong steps into his special tux, a prototype known as Tactical Unifrom Xperiment - TUX for short - that gives him special if erratic powers.
Sadly those powers don't stretch to improving the quality of the dumb humour, nor Chan's comfort with the English language, but at least he enjoys himself with a burst of high-speed James Brown dancing and singing, after accidentally knocking out the Godfather of Soul in his dressing room.
With head-strong rookie agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt) working alongside him, Wong is out to stop the Machiavellian Diedrich Banning (Ritchie Coster), who intends to take over the world by contaminating water supplies to force everyone to buy his bottled brand. So when the going gets tough, the tux gets going.
While Chan parades his Bond pastiche, Jason Isaacs quietly sends in his application form for being the next 007. Love Hewitt, meanwhile, is treated as little more than a conduit - or may be that should be boob tube - for re-fried Barbara Windsor jokes.
Despite his charm, natural comedy skills and stunt-routine bravado never deserting him, the ill-fitting Tuxedo just doesn't suit Jackie Chan.
Updated: 09:43 Friday, January 10, 2003
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