No Surrender Cinema: The Foreigner (2017)
Political intrigue and subversion are not two characteristics one might think of when discussing Jackie Chan films, but these two subjects are at the core of The Foreigner, the 2017 film starring Chan and Pierce Brosnan. Though I’ve heard plenty about the film over the past several years, this week was the first time I sat down to watch it in full, and although I might be late to the party, I’m still going to give my thoughts on it here in No Surrender Cinema!
Tragedy strikes Chan’s character Quan when he is injured and his daughter is killed in a bombing purported to have been committed by the IRA. His daughter’s death sends Quan on a downward spiral, and he becomes withdrawn from his business partner and relentless in his quest to get the authorities to name names. Unhappy with the lack of progress from Scotland Yard, Quan travels to Belfast, Ireland and confronts Deputy First Minister Liam Hennessy (Brosnan) about his knowledge of the incident. Quan’s attempts to find justice for his daughter once again hit a wall, so he does what any grieving father would do and sets off an improvised explosive in Hennessy’s office! This puts Quan in the crosshairs of Hennessy, who before his political career was a member of the IRA. Hennessy orders a team to locate Quan before any more damage is done, while simultaneously attempts to solve the mystery of who is behind the attack that cost Quan’s daughter her life.
As the runtime of The Foreigner rolls on, we come to realize that Quan is not just a feeble old man with an axe to grind; he was a special ops soldier in the Vietnam War! Not only that, but Quan had two other daughters who were raped and killed by Thai pirates years earlier during their escape from Vietnam, making Fan the last of his living children. With his only remaining family now gone, Quan truly has nothing to lose, which explains why he has no qualms about blowing off homemade bombs in the vicinity of political figures. He manages to evade some of Hennessy’s men who find him in a boarding house, and rather than stay off of Hennessy’s radar, he brings the fight to Hennessy’s home with more makeshift bombs and a series of traps that incapacitate several of Hennessy’s men as they try to track Quan in the woods.
While digging deeper into the initial bombing that set off this chain of events, Hennessy comes to realize that those responsible are closer to home than he’d imagined. A confrontation with McGrath, one of his old IRA buddies, leads to a series of revelations that put Hennessy right in the center of the shitstorm. The semtex used in the bombing came from McGrath’s dump, Hennessy’s mistress is actually a part of the group that’s been planting them and is ready to blackmail him if he doesn’t go along with it, and Hennessy’s own wife is the one spearheading the attacks! It wasn’t bad enough finding out that Quan was some type of super-soldier who was disabling all of his henchmen with ease, but now he finds out that the calls were coming from inside the house, so to speak.
The cherry on top of Hennessy’s shit sundae is that his nephew Sean Morrisson, who he sends out into the woods to track and capture Quan, is also banging his wife (the same wife who just so happens to be behind the bombings). Hennessy realizes that he could be sending Sean to his death, but though Quan easily defeats Sean, he uses him to gain the information he’s been after; the names of those who caused his daughter’s death. This leads to a climax where Quan and the authorities both converge on the terrorists, and Hennessy has his own messes to clean up. Rest assured, there’s also one final encounter between Quan and Hennessy as the shit is hitting the fan, but it may not be what you’d expect it to be.
The Foreigner feels like many things; a political drama, a revenge thriller, but it never feels like a traditional Jackie Chan movie. Gone are the eye-catching stunts and Jackie’s good natured humor. He’s playing it straight in this one, and he does a damn good job of it. I like it when actors step out of their comfort zone, and watching Jackie Chan of all people somberly mourning his daughter and then morphing into Liam Neeson from Taken is something else. The best comparison that I have for The Foreigner is Edge of Darkness, which had Mel Gibson playing a cop whose daughter was murdered as part of a political coverup. I loved Edge of Darkness, so the comparison should be taken as a compliment. I also enjoyed Pierce Brosnan’s performance, because much like Chan, he goes against type here. Gone is the suave demeanor that catapulted him to iconic James Bond status. Here he’s a snide, cunning figure, a man who is capable of bad things but still has his limits. Their shared screen time is minimal, but it was very cool to see Chan and Brosnan on-screen together.
I recall people raving about The Foreigner, and the praise is absolutely deserved. Kudos to Jackie Chan for opting to go against the grain, especially when a man who has done what he’s done could very easily choose to coast on his reputation. Although there isn’t any blowaway action sequences (well, except for the bombings), The Foreigner never felt dull, and the fights that Chan does have don’t feel out of place within the context of the story. There are a few kicks and punches thrown, but anyone looking for their martial arts movie fix shouldn’t be fooled by Chan’s name on the dvd cover.
Speaking of DVD and Blu-Ray, right now that’s the only way you can currently see The Foreigner, as it is currently not on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, PlutoTV, or Amazon Prime (unless you pay to watch it). Physical copies were hovering around $8 last I checked on Amazon, so if you do want to watch it, it’s not like you’d have to break the bank in doing so (plus, I’m a huge advocate for the collection and preservation of physical media). This one had been a curiosity of mine for a long time, and I’m glad I finally got to it. It might not be a film I rewatch over and over, but it’s one that I wish I had watched earlier when people were buzzing about it.
