Twelve bronze heads representing the Chinese zodiac were looted during the Opium War. JC aka Asian Hawk (Jackie Chan) and his action team are trying to recover them. With replicas of the heads, they travel to Paris where some of the bronzes are being auctioned. Disguised as a National Geographic photographer, he infiltrates a protest group led by Coco trying to repatriate stolen antiquities.Asian Hawk is a Jackie Chan character from the 80's in the Armour of God movies. It's not the greatest of writing but it's just simple fun action adventure. It is very much HK comedy style from the 80's and 90's. Jackie is able to excel in his outrageous stunt work. He's still fun and still half man, half amazing. It probably needs a more steady presence from a head villain and one super henchman which all good Bond movies deserve. Instead, there is a myriad of villains like The Warriors including a Pirates of the Caribbean gang. For example, Oliver Platt could have been that head villain but he only has a short cameo. Jackie fans will find a fine silly Jackie movie. Others may not appreciate the appeal.

I've probably seen at least 80% of Jackie's films, new and old, plenty more than once, but I was really disappointed at this. I watched the English dub (normally I'd prefer to watch the original language, subtitled into English) The script feels like they took every other line out at random, and the plot, such as it is, really suffers because of it. A decent scriptwriter handling the English version could have made all the difference.It's a shame because the production values are high, and the stunts are good (if a little fake in places, due to obvious wire removal shots, which is a shame because that is what I enjoyed most about the old films)

I have been a fan of Jackie Chan's since I was a teenager... which means that he has been working in the action genre since the early '70s... which means that he's already 60 years old. Chinese Zodiac is far from being at the same level of classics from his filmography, such as Armour of God or Operation Condor, and it's a sequel of those films which retakes the adventures of the "Asian Hawk" (also known as "Condor"), a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones who employs his amazing physical ability, high-technology gadgets and big doses of humor in order to find historical relics of a big monetary and cultural value. In this occasion, the search of brass heads will take the Hawk from elegant European palaces to the depths of the jungle, and he will be in conflict with professional counterfeiters, pirates (including the Asian version of Captain Jack) and students who protest the illegal auction of historical artifacts which belong to Chinese people. In summary, we are in presence of a film with too many sub-plots, and that provokes unavoidable confusion, a parade of characters who appear and disappear from the film without any explanation, and dramatic moments which should cause an impact... if we could understand what's going on. On the action aspect, Chinese Zodiac is a bit modest, but that doesn't avoid the presence of intense fights and excellent stunts. In order to make his life a bit easier, Chan delegated the biggest part of the fights to his co-stars, and he employed a considerable digital help to make many of the stunts; however, we can see him in a very good shape during the denouement of the film, in one of his traditional fights with a complicated choreography, and in an attractive action sequence on the slope of a volcano, which looks like a modernized version of that famous stunt which almost cost his life in Operation Condor. So, despite not being a highly memorable film, Chinese Zodiac is an entertaining action film which deserves a moderate recommendation to fans of Chan's who need confirmation of this artist's (note that I didn't say "actor") talent, and of his indomitable compromise to the audience, being at an age when he should be resting and producing films, instead of keep risking his life in front of the cameras. But I don't know if I could recommend it to neophytes in the matter; to them, I would suggest to start approaching Chan's filmography with some of the films he made in the '80s (Police Story and Police Story 2 are my favorite ones from his whole filmography). And, as always, don't forget to stay during the credits of Chinese Zodiac, where we can see bloopers, some details from behind the scenes and even a retrospective of Chan's filmography. This might seem a bit arrogant and self-indulgent, but if there's someone who earned the right of saying "I'm proud of myself", that one is Chan. After all, he has payed the admiration of his fans with blood.

I'll keep this short and in layman's terms. This movie is terrible. I'm actually 2/3rds into the movie as I write this because I cannot focus my attention towards this disaster anymore. I don't know much about technical aspects of cinema like cinematography, vfx, or video processing, but this movie's final cut looks bad. It looks like a standard grainy DVD res on a full HD blue ray setup (which is what Im viewing)... so there's that. Where do I begin? I can start by saying that the plot is very similar to Operation Condor (the one released in the US). Chan has lost his ability to pull off amazing fight scenes. No doubt that he's in shape for his age, but the action choreography in this movie was beyond corny. Chan relies on a group of young pretty Asians to team up with to do the heavy fight scenes. Also, they can't act worth a sh*t. Even by watching a dubbed version of this movie, all I see is a bunch of hysterical people pantomiming as if it was a silent film. This brings me to another major technical problem with this movie, which is the audio dubbing. The dubbed voice audio levels are very bad. I could hardly hear the actors talk throughout the whole movie. I was guessing what was going on most of the time. Worst of all, the blu ray of this movie doesn't come with subtitles. There's also the unnecessary usage of CGI. Its everywhere in this movie, even in simple scenes where they throw stuff into a river (no kidding). Jackie Chan plays some sort of Indiana Jones grave robbing archaeologist that has to acquire a bunch of bronze busts. Along the way, a European heiress tags along with Chan's crew to go treasure hunting with them. Its Operation Condor all over again. Except this time instead of Nazis, its French aristocrats. They jet set to a bunch of expensive looking locations like Paris, and a micro island with an active volcano, but still skimp out scenes by using unconvincing CGI. Ie: the skydiving scene which was fake and entirely redone w/ VFX graphics. So after a bunch of (maybe a dozen) mediocre PG fight ballets, the movie ends. Its followed by the ending blooper scenes which weren't even good. The best part of it was the blooper montage from Chan's career where some of his old stunts were shown. I'm sure it was perceived as a master piece in his mainland China, but this movie was just an overextended and over budget crapfest.