The Shanghai Job

Mr. Bloom, I used to be your fan and liked some of your films, especially "Kingdom of Heaven", which gave certain impact to the depth of my emotion and the character you played also impressed me a lot. Your participations of all the films you've signed on never overlooked by me.

But this "The Shanghai Job" really forced me to call an end to pay any further attention to you, because this film only qualified for "straight to Wal-Mart B-movie DVD bin", not qualified for a generous wide release on the big screen. Please do not get involve with any film backed up by any Chinese production in the future. This film is just so pretentious and phony and so painful to watch, not just terrible.

Also, dying your hair into a blond only gave me such a pain to watch, it looked just so repellently unnatural. Your heavy South African English accent in this film also turned me off further. The story is so childishly ridiculous, the scenarios and the plots both laughable, the directing so mediocre, genetic and boring. All the supporting actors, some of them are veterans and reputed in mainland China or in Hong Kong, but they were also ridiculed and wasted by this ridiculous and childish screenplay. It's, like I've said before, so painful to watch.

This film is so bad and I really don't want to waste more words to review it, 'cause it's unworthy.

"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.

The plot is both convoluted and dumb. That's it's biggest flaw. The characters regularly make ridiculous decisions. And even though a security firm is featured, its absurdly small for the assignments it takes on.

It's an action movie, but as it is set in contemporary China, no firearms are involved. This detail needn't have had a negative impact, however, if it featured decent martial arts. But while there is plenty of hand to hand combat, it's pretty generic in style. It's not particularly entertaining, and doesn't involve the kinds of martial arts maneuvers fans of martial arts themed films would expect to see.

Almost the entire cast is Chinese. Also, a large percentage of them appear to be quite young. In addition, the entire movie takes place in China. Yet the director and screenwriter are both Westerners. So it's unclear who the target audience is supposed to be. Chinese, or more specifically, Chinese youth? If so, the film might have been more effective if the screenwriter were either Chinese, or deeply familiar with the tastes of that country. Then again, Orlando Bloom is a Brit, so maybe the intended audience is British or Western?

Perhaps the best thing about the film is that many of the actors are quite good looking.

This film tells the story of a security expert who is ambushed during a job to protect a vase from Shanghai to London.

Even though it is a proper heist film, it lacks intensity and thrill. It somehow does not seem very believable or engaging, but I can't exactly pinpoint what is wrong with it. Perhaps it is because of its constant need to impress viewers with its fancy cars, posh real estates and high tech gadgets.

I have read all the reviews about the movie and I must say a good number of them were pretty harsh. It is obvious that the movie wasn't a Grade A movie however i didnt start it with high expectations . I would say I was a bit impressed and it isn't as bad as it is portrayed by a lot of people . It is something you can sit to watch if you are bored and swill totally enjoy. I guess people expected more from Orlando bloom but I will say the movie wasn't terrible