“Gorgeous” Japanese DVD Cover
Director: Vincent Kok
Cast: Jackie Chan, Shu Qi, Tony Leung, Emil Chow, Richie Ren, Elaine Jin, Bradley Allan, Vincent Kok, Sandra Ng, Sam Lee, Stephen Chow, Stephen Fung
Running Time: 121 min.
By Vic Nguyen
Lovelorn daydreamer Bu (Hsu Chi), on a typical day in her Taiwanese village, finds a mysterious message in a bottle. The contents read, “I’m waiting for you”, signed Albert from Hong Kong. Thinking that this might be her true love calling, she kisses her countrylife goodbye, and hops a plane to HK. Upon arriving in this new land, she immediately locates Albert (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), only to be discouraged, because you see, he is gay. But ever the goodheart, Albert agrees to take her in, despite initial hesitation.
While exploring the finer life of Hong Kong, Bu embarks on wealthy conglomerate CN Chan (Jackie Chan), who is in the midst of competition with his rival, LW (Emil Chow). The evercurious Bu develops a sudden interest in CN, and eventually, a relationship develops between the two. And on the other hand, LW enlists the assistance of an American kickboxer in order to humiliate CN. Upon their first bout, he does the deed, beating CN in an impromptu kickboxing match. Now, with the guidance of Bu, CN must go through vigourous training, in order to beat LW at his own game, and to gain back the pride he lost.
Director Vincent Kok Tat-chiu takes the reins this time, and does a good job for the most part, injecting large doses of light hearted humor and innocent fun into the mix. Occupying most of the screen time, surprisingly enough, is Hsu Chi, who does an admirable job portraying the innocent but immature Bu (or maybe this is what she’s like in real life), while co-stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai (appearing in the film as a favor to the late Leonard Ho Koon-cheung) and Emil Chau are obviously having a delightful time with their roles. The one performance that emerges as a disappointment is Jackie Chan, who coasts through this one with barely a semblance of enthusiasm, and, at the end (excluding a few scenes), comes off as dull and lifeless as the character he plays. Providing fun cameos are a plethora of celebrity faces, most notably Stephen Fung, Sam Lee Chan-sam, Sandra Ng, Annie Wu, Erik Kok, and Stephen Chow Sing-chi (Chan would return the favor later on, appearing briefly in Chow’s own Lunar New Year’s venture, King of Comedy).
Of course, what Chan lacks in the performance department, he more than makes it up with a series of exhilirating, well choreographed action sequences (all of which shows that this 45 year old man can still deliver). Highlights include Chan’s nifty tricks with several baseball bats, and a couple kickboxing duels showcasing the acrobatic agility of Chan and his opponent, in the form of Australian martial artist Brad Allan. The talents of Allan are really a thing to behold, as he throws off an impressive array of kicking combinations that gives Ken Lo and Benny Urquidez a run for their money. The end bout, set in a recycling plant, is terrific, and is worth the price of admission all by itself. And, in the tradition of Jackie Chan films, an outtakes reel is showcased under the end credits (more oriented with flubbed lines than with action goofups), closing the film with additional laughs, and leaving with the viewer with the feeling that they had a genuine good time.
Gorgeous was released on VCD under the Universe Laser and Video label, boasting a double disc package enclosed in a slick, cardboard case. The film itself is presented in it’s original widescreen format, with small, but legible Chinese/English subtitles burnt on the black, widescreen portion. The disc suffers from hazy, undetailed colors, mild jittering and pixelization, which is constant, but not very distracting. Filmed in sync sound with an even mixture of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English dialogue, the disc offers the viewer the former, in addition to providing a dubbed Mandarin track. A DVD version has also been issued by the same company, but unfortunately, I have yet to see it for myself (it reportedly is chock full of extras, including a subtitled making-of documentary).
The bottom line: don’t expect an action packed thrillride, and go away pleasantly surprised.
Vic Nguyen’s Rating: 7.5/10
I recently got around to checking this one out, being one of the last Jackie Chan movies I was yet to see. With the original HK DVD long out of print, and the US version cut by over 20 mins, thankfully the 2017 HK Blu-ray finally gave me the opportunity I’d been waiting for!
I agree with everything in the review. This is actually Shu Qi’s movie more than it is Chan’s, and she owns it, with a bubbly energy that radiates off the screen. Ironically, Chan shows many of the same problems here as he does in ‘Vanguard’ over 20 years later. He can do serious when serious involves extreme stress (and usually a lot of sweating), but here his character is essentially a riff on Richard Gere’s businessman in ‘Pretty Woman’, and he just doesn’t sell his attraction to make it believable that someone like Shu Qi (who’s 22 years his junior) would fall in love with him. Instead he simply plays his character as poker faced and bland, until that is, he’s called into action, at which point he immediately becomes the Jackie Chan we all know and love (made at a time when we did still love the guy).
I was amazed to read just how much was cut from the U.S. version. Stephen Chow’s cameo scene was completely removed, and it’s the funniest scene in the whole movie, closely followed by the cameos from Sandra Ng and Lee Lik-Chi at the airport, also snipped in its entirety! I’m surprised there was enough left to make a trailer with.
I’m glad I finally got to see ‘Gorgeous’, the plentiful HK cameos, Shu Qi, Tony Leung as a gay make-up artist, and some inspired comedy make it well worth a watch, CGI dolphins and all.
I liked Gorgeous as well, and would be perfectly fine if Jackie Chan made more movies like that instead of his recent films with Stanley Tong. He often talks about wanting to do more dramatic fare that features a decent amount of action, and Gorgeous seemed to be it at the time.
The first time I saw Jackie vs Brad Allen, I thought there were no tricks, but even with the limited stunt doubling and wire work, it’s still a great scene. It would be nice to see Brad in front of the camera more often.
To me, Gorgeous was the start of when JC’s movies started to become “unexciting” to me. The whole vibrant ‘rich guy’ thing just turned me off from everything I loved about a JC movie. It’s as if the script of this one was written for the “superstar” that he was, and not a totally different character he’s using to nailing like like we saw in Who Am I or even Mr. Nice Guy. Yeah, sure, there’s some nice fight scenes in it, but it’s another reminder that we loved JC films as a whole (comedy, charisma, story, and chemistry with his co-stars), and not just the flashy action. And to say that this movie – made 20 years ago when JC was still fully loaded – had the same problems as Vanguard, is saying something! (and I haven’t even seen Vanguard, but I’m confident my opinion wouldn’t change if I had!).