Eddie Yang (Jackie Chan),Arthur Watson (Lee Evans),and Nicole James (Claire Forlani) are Interpol agents on the trail of artifact thief Snakehead (Julian Sands) and his crew. Snakehead is pursuing a boy and his medallion with supernatural powers.

The movie starts with an ill-defined situation. It's a muddle until a hippie does an exposition dump at the midpoint. The more this turns into a superhero movie, the less compelling it becomes. The comedy starts off badly with a gay panic joke from Lee Evans. He's not the best comedian but he could have worked if he had better material. His wife has a fun reveal but it comes out of nowhere. Forlani is wasted with an empty character. Her best scenes are the deleted scenes in the credits. Jackie's deleted scenes are legendary but this one only has comedic flubs. It's not as awesome as a stunt gone wrong. All in all, the writing is a mess and maybe it could have been saved.

Usually, I try not to judge a film solely on its failures, but unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this movie, The Medallion has more flaws than you can count. There are some films of Jackie Chan that I like, Rush Hour especially. However, this is not one of them, and I will say right now that Chan is the only redeeming quality to this clunky mess: it certainly didn't help that the film looked as though it had been edited on a bacon slicer. The stunts are usually the best thing in a Jackie Chan movie, but the execution here is very confused, lacking drive and energy. The fact that the film is also devoid of a convincing enough plot is yet another disadvantage, and the script is uninvolving, was forced at times and lacked bite. The chemistry between Chan and his girlfriend (played by Clare Forlani) was unconvincing. Now I liked Julian Sands in The Scoundrel's Wife, and as an actor he is generally watchable, but his villain Snakehead was poorly written, and not at all threatening, and the child did literally nothing but stare which was rather unpleasant at times. The film also wasted the talents of John Rhys Davies, a very good actor, when he has some decent enough material, not the case here. I suppose the worst thing about this movie, is the truly irritating performance of comedian Lee Evans as Chan's partner. Honestly everything he said and did made me cringe, it was strongly reminiscent of Marlon Wayans in Dungeons & Dragons, proving that anyone who's going to try to bring some humour into an overall hopeless film, is going to fail miserably. Overall, a film that is a bit of a mess to put it kindly. If you like Chan, you may like it, otherwise avoid. Not the absolute worst movie I have ever seen, but it certainly lingers at that end of the film spectrum. 1/10 Bethany Cox.

Recap: Police officer Eddie Yang traces known gangster Snakehead to Ireland after Snakehead kidnapped a holy kid in Hong Kong. According to the myth, the kid, with a certain medallion, can resurrect people and give them superpowers (like immortality). Yang, and his colleagues Watson and James, tries to free the kid as Snakehead tries to smuggle the kid into Ireland on a boat. The result however is that the kid and Eddie falls in to the water, trapped in a container. Eddie drowns, but saves the boy, and in return, the boy later resurrects Eddie. Now, Eddie, with superpowers must stop Snakehead once and for all.

Comments: I thought they really had something going there. Started out nice. As I expected, a lot of martial arts and fights, all nicely choreographed and with augmented with extra aids (like wires),of course, but still with a good feeling and some nice touches. The story was nothing fancy, but they had found the balance in the fights. Just enough fancy kicks and jumps. Action director Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan were onto something here. Then came the superpowers. Then everything went just silly. The balance went right out the window (along with Jackie Chan/Eddie Yang actually). Instead of nicely choreographed fights we get ridiculous fights with a lot of special effects. Net result; Silly. And the story didn't get any better either.

Jackie Chan delivers what is expected of him, he does what he usually does. But I can't do anything but wonder why the character Arthur Watson is in the movie? To add some comic element apparently, as that was needed. Watson is annoyingly clumsy, petty and incompetent and has mysteriously risen to a high position within Interpol. Evans plays the part well, I guess he does what is asked of him, but again, why is the character in the movie? Claire Forlani got the role of Nicole James, agent/love interest, of Eddie Yang. Though Nicole is much more competent than Watson she is clearly side-stepped both in the movie and with the virtual Interpol. Therefore her role is small, her potential and talent not used, her major part is as the one taking care of the kid (Doh, she's a woman - and this is a boring stereotype). She gets to show her skill in martial arts a few times though, showing she (or her stunt double - some shots make it easy to assume she has one) got them. Her only major fight though is, of course, against the female bad guy (to the sound of screeching cats... oh, come on!).

So, the beginning was promising, the second "half" disappointing. On average a 5.