“Panda Plan” Theatrical Poster
Director: Luan Zhang
Cast: Jackie Chan, Yanbo Han, Ce Shi, Xiang Wei, Temur Mamisashvili, Aleksandra Smirnova
Running Time: 100 min.
By Paul Bramhall
In one of the initial scenes from Jackie Chan’s latest big screen outing, Panda Plan, a character says, “It’s a commercial movie, it needs to entertain.” In many ways the line could be interpreted as director Luan Zhang’s way of announcing his intentions to the audience, and it’s far from being the only meta-aspect of the production. If 2023’s Ride On was Chan’s own way of playing a character who acts as a reflection of his own life, then his latest takes that journey one step further. How? The answer is surprisingly simple – in Panda Plan Jackie Chan is playing Jackie Chan. We’re not talking about the 90’s era Jackie Chan where movies like First Strike and Mr. Nice Guy had his character referred to as Jackie, but there was still some vague notion that he was supposed to be playing a fictional character. No, here he’s world-famous action movie star Jackie Chan, and a zoo on the fictional Noah Island has asked him to adopt a baby panda.
Not just any baby panda mind you, this one is a CGI baby panda with 700 million followers on social media, and features the rare trait of having black eyes of different sizes, apparently making it “the only one in existence.” Naturally, this also means that some Arabs want to get their hands on it, and are willing to pay whatever price is asked for to get it. So they hire Continue reading
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