- Actors: Ken Lo, Xingtong Yao, Rongguang Yu, Lanxin Zhang
- Director: Yinxi Song
- Disc Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
- Language: English
- Region: Region 1
- Rated: PG-13
- Studio: Lionsgate
- DVD Release Date: January 3, 2017
- Run Time: 102 minutes
Jackie Chan Presents: Amnesia is a film
for anyone who ever wondered what would happen if you combined the narratives
of Premium Rush with Memento and set it in the comedic
martial arts world of a Jackie Chan film. If this sounds convoluted and strange
(as well as being a comparison that only someone who watches too many movies
would make), my description was fitting. Despite the originality of this blended
premise, there is a familiarity in the tone and many of the action sequences in
the narrative that manage to make this feel like just another mediocre martial
arts movie. Part of the problem is that this Jackie Chan-produced movie has a
lead actor without even a fraction of the producer’s charisma. It doesn’t exactly
help that we (meaning myself and others that watch too many movies) have also
already seen Chan in a similar memory-loss action film, Who Am I? (1998).
Although
originally titled Who Am I 2015 and
planned as a remake of Chan’s 1998 film about a secret agent losing his memory,
the title was wisely changed to avoid this confusion. For one thing, the main
character in Amnesia is not a secret
agent, as he was in the 1998 film, which also removes the obvious comparison to
the Jason Bourne franchise. Instead,
our protagonist is simply a bike courier named Li Ziwei (Wang Haixiang), given
a package to deliver which contains important evidence against a local
criminal. When our unassuming hero witnesses the murder of a businessman who
sent the package, he is chased down by the henchmen both for what he saw and
the evidence that he carries.
This initial
chase ends with an accident (shown in freeze-frame over the opening credits in
a way that was suspiciously close to the opening used for Deadpool a year after this film), leaving our protagonist with a
debilitating head injury. Here is where the title and comparison to Chan’s past
film diverge from the actual plot, because our hero suffers from prosopagnosia
(face blindness) rather than amnesia. He has no trouble remembering what
happened, but cannot recognize anybody that he knows by their face.
This obviously
makes him an unreliable witness for the murder, but this does not stop the
criminal lackeys from targeting him. Framed for the murder he witnessed, Li is
chased by both criminals and cops. His only chance for navigating the sea of
unfamiliar faces comes in the form of an annoying hitchhiker (Yao Xingtong) he
picks up along the way. This leads to a bit of obligatory romance, which is
never really earned in chemistry between the characters, despite the forced
sentimentality the filmmakers place on their relationship. The movie only
occasionally thrives in the type of slapstick-inspired action sequences that
Chan would have excelled at, with Wang exhibiting a fraction of the same magic.
The DVD includes
no special features.
Entertainment Value:
5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 4/10
Historical
Significance: 3/10
Special Features: 0/10
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