Kick'em In The Ghoulies

Vangaurd is a Chinese Security company situated in London , Now I did not see that coming.  It;s set around the Chinese New Year celebrations in London's China Town. 

Jackie plays the Head of Vanguard Tang Huanting with Yang Yang as one of his agents Lei Zhenyu. Also appearing as female agent is Miya Muqi a Chinese dancer , Yoga and Taekwondo Instructor who starred with Jackie in Kung Fu Yoga.

When a Chinese Accountant in London is approached by a terrorist organisation to finance their cause , the accountant who has informed the Police gets kidnapped in China Town while the New Year festival is on . But watching are Vangaurd who through CCTV is monitoring the area and capture the Kidnapping in Progress. Vanguard is alerted and Tang gets his team to go in for the rescue. 

After a daring rescue , which has some good shots of London's China Town , which I was quite surprised to see. 

Now The terrorists want their finance and send a mob after the accountants daughter who happens to be in Africa on a nature reserve .

Vanguard is sent to get to the daughter before the terrorist do in a bid to save her .

Playing out much like most Stanley Tong films , Vanguard is a globetrotting extravaganza but on a budget. With filming in London, Dubai and other work in studio .

After getting to the accountants daughter Fareeda  with little or no time to spare the Terrorists and Vanguard agents enter into a battle where they must overcome each other and the local wild life. 

The big set piece here is the chase on to a river which  leads to a water fall . There are some really cool scenes here and shows that as far as choreographing and setting up the action   the combination of Stanley Tong and Jackie Chan and his stunt team do come up with fresh content.

But it's also here where it nearly all came to a end. when performing a stunt on a jet Ski for the Water Fall scene , which i will add is done by CGI as no one in the world could do it as it was shown in the film. 

The piece in question was filmed up river to show Tang and Mi Ya who are in a chase with terrorists navigate the waterfall. 

What seemed a simple stunt for Jackie , much like the Armour of God one . it all went awry when the Jet ski capsizes and Jackie an his colleague go under ,but Jackie don't come back up . 

The end credits show the crew rush to rescue Jackie who seems to be under the water for ages. He must have great lungs I tell ya. You also see the how close Jackie thought he was to the end in the outtakes as he is brought ashore looking slightly dishevelled and very cold and wet. 

After this the film shifts to the far east as Tang and his team have to confront the Terrorist leader and it's here that the film takes a slightly darker tone in places.  And the action hots up in a full scale mini war on terrorism as Tang and his team go head to head with not just fists but Machine Guns, Rocket launchers and whatever. 

You can see where the money was spent on the film because the action come thick and fast.

But remember it's not just Jackie but Yang Yang who gets to shine and he does do his own stunts to a degree. , this is also shown on the outtakes. 

It does seem that Jackie's role was more towards the beginning of the film with Yang Yang getting the later half of the film. 

The story shifts once again as we head to Dubai  in what becomes like a showcase for the worlds most expensive cars and a chance for the crew and cast to have some fun , but this also where much CGI is used as they where not going to risk millions of pounds worth of cars. 

But Unlike say the Fast and Furious the special effects are lacking also the choice of colours for some of the cars do cause the screen to look odd at times , but these where real cars they shot and you can see even in the outtakes it must have been hard to eliminate the glare , a strange choice , it's a bit like the old adage ,don't wear a dog tooth jacket or suit on camera as it looks really odd  .

The CGI sections looked they need more work in post production then it got , but i guess budget is a budget and as it is recorded that Jackie earn't around $12 Million for his role I guess that was a sizeable amount of the budget there.

But then he did nearly drown , so I give him that.