Skip or Not?

Although I'm a big Jackie Chan fan, his recent movies have been kind of hit or miss. Skiptrace (2016), directed by Renny Harlin, surprised me by being more of a hit.

It starts with with police detective Jackie and his partner Eric Tsang chasing master criminal Matador, when Tsang falls off a crane into the sea and vanishes. Years later, no one believes that Matador exists, but Tsang's daughter, Fan Bingbing, is in trouble. Jackie thinks Matador, his obsession, is involved.

This is all welll and good, but we know from the promos that noted Jackass Johnnie Knoxville is also in the movie. He turns out to be a crooked gambler working out of Macao, because he's barred everywhere else. He wanders somewhere he shouldn't be, and runs into a woman just as she's killed - by Matador? So now Jackie has to track him down and bring him to Hong Kong to testify (I guess; I don't always pay a lot of attention to the plot of these movies).

He tracks him to Russia, where he is in trouble with the Mafiya, and then they have to walk to China. Seriously, they supposedly walk across the Gobi Desert. This is stupid, but gives them a chance to goof around with Mongolians for a while. It's totally pointless and one of the high points of the movie.

The Jackie Chan parts of the movie were pretty good - not top rank, but above average (especially for older Jackie). Johnnie Knoxville wasn't bad either. Of course, he played a loud obnoxious con-man and crook, but it did it well. There wasn't much Jackassery that I detected (I never watched it, so who knows?), except one scene where he is stuffed into a trashcan and rolled down a hill. As far as I could see, it was done with dummies.

In conclusion, late Jackie Chan worth watching, not at all spoiled by Knoxville.