Danny Stratton (Orlando Bloom) runs a security firm that quickly goes down hill when they get robbed of a valuable painting. A year later they get to redeem themselves by transporting a valuable vase only to run into the same gang that robbed them the first time. Danny wants to get the stolen item back and his girlfriend.

This has your basic Chines formula with the expected Scooby-doo twist and Disney ending.

Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

"The Shanghai Job" (aka "Ji Zhi zhui ji" and "S.M.A.R.T. Chase" was a movie that I hadn't even heard about prior to finding it by random luck here in 2019. I had no idea what it was about, but I still did decide to sit down and watch it.

Turns out that the movie was sort of a very bland mediocre movie. It wasn't particularly bad, nor was it outstandingly good either. It was entertaining enough for what it turned out to be, for sure. But the movie was just suffering from being generic and not really offering much of any twists or surprises to the audience.

The action sequences in the movie were actually good and the car chases as well. And this level of action was definitely helping to pump adrenaline into the movie and make it watchable.

As for the character, well they were bland and fairly non-distinct. They were lacking personalities and background. It never really felt like that there were much of any character growth of any sort throughout the movie, and you never really got to know them either.

Now, Orlando Bloom was actually fairly good in the movie, though he had some good help from the likes of Simon Yam and Xing Yu.

The movie was predictable, and you knew the outcome of the movie from the very beginning. But with that in mind, the movie still does provide mediocre entertainment and is watchable once.

I suppose that if you are an Orli - and quite a buff Orli at that - fan, then you may be more forgiving of this really rather daft action adventure. Mr. Bloom is "Danny" who runs a team of security experts that have recently had a bit of a setback with a Van Gogh. To re-establish their reputation, they have to escort a priceless Chinese vase from it's home in Shanghai to an exhibition in London. En route to the airport... Yes, it's that predictable and the poor old jug never quite makes it out of the city - indeed for much of this it is looking at a future as very expensive jigsaw puzzle. Clearly there was a few bob in it for the star, but otherwise it is about as derivate as they get. For some reason, I quite liked "Ding-Dong" (Lei Wu) who was the geek controlling their tech and comms - he easily had he best gig (and gets the girl) but I am afraid that our friends in China really do need to find better scripts/plots to invest their considerable funds in...