The Shanghaï Job

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.

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.

Orlando Bloom portrays the head of a Shanghai security company specializing in protecting valuable art work being transported from country to country. After a priceless Van Gogh is stolen from his possession about a year before, he's given a second chance by a Shanghai museum to transport a most valuable and last of its kind vase. Of course, things will not go according to plan.

This film just came across to me as amateurish and non-believable with stilted dialogue as well. Numerous chases and martial arts scenes are very predictable. Also, could someone have gotten Bloom a band-aid for that bloody forehead gash he was sporting almost the entire movie?

Overall, can't recommend.

"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.

Considered amongst many film critics to be the very best at convincingly portraying a piece of very thin, soaking wet, tissue paper and possessing the emotional range of a balloon with a face drawn on it, Orlando Balloon has proven time and time again that you don't actually need to be able to act in order to be successfully mistaken for an actor.

In this latest offering he succeeds spectacularly in proving so again. The addition this time around of a mop of blonde hair and a selection of small cuts to his face and various 'hero' poses, all fail in adding any real depth to his standard facial expression or to this flop. It's dire.

Fortunately for all concerned, Orlando cannot confirm what his next role might be and it really isn't worth watching this movie to see for yourself why that is.