Tiger in the Tank

Railroad Tigers (2016) is your basic late Jackie Chan: a big cast to share the stunt duties and a little more wire work and editing around Jackie scenes. Still, a lot of fun.

It starts with a little boy looking at an old steam train, and he sees a cartoon tiger face chalked on the boiler. This triggers a flashback. We meet Jackie and crew robbing a train. This is during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, so they are more or less freedom fighters. By day, they are railroad workers, and hang out at auntie Xu Fan’s pancake shop. As the Japanese train security mounts, they run into a wounded Chinese soldier. They hide him from the Japanese and he tells them of his mission - to destroy a certain bridge at a certain time. So the Tigers, much against their better judgement, agree to help.

The lead up is long and convoluted, with lots of new character enter, including Andy Lau. Each new character gets an old-fashiony title card, which helps keep them straight, but not by much. Many of them get a fighting style, like the engineer who uses a hammer on a rope. There are goofy fights and stunts - like when they make a human pyramid to scale a wall and then notice there was a ladder a little ways over. Most of this film is an action comedy.

Then comes the final fight to destroy the bridge. No one expects to come back alive, and pretty much no one does. This tonal shift might be jarring, but is actually pretty common in Chan’s movies. I feel like he wants to emphasize that violence is not all fun and games. But in the end, we come out of the flashback to see the little kid’s father, who was one of the Tigers. So either someone made it out alive, or it was all a story he was telling.

All in all, a little long and complicated, but some great set pieces.