Jackie Chan's Skiptrace earns big with old tricks

Jackie Chan's latest film, Skiptrace, stars American actor Johnny Knoxville. It has raked in 400 million yuan ($60 million) in its first weekend to top the box office charts, although drawing mixed reviews. Photos provided to China Daily

Globally recognized kung fu giant Jackie Chan's latest film Skiptrace has raked in 400 million yuan ($60 million) in its first weekend, to top the box-office charts. But fans are calling it a hodgepodge of cliches. Xu Fan reports.

From jumping off a 70-meter-high skyscraper in the Netherlands for Who Am I to seriously injuring his head in the former Yugoslavia for Armour of God, Jackie Chan is never short of close-to-death stories.

However, the globally recognized kung fu giant now faces a new danger: becoming a cliche for his fans.

The 62-year-old's latest film Skiptrace, which debuted in China on Thursday, has received a disappointing score of 5.8 points out of 10 on douban.com, China's largest movie review site.

Most of the comments on the site refer to the film a hodgepodge of cliches－a stereotyped crime plot, stunts that look similar to those from Chan's previous movies, funny lines that don't work and soft eroticism.

Interestingly, even with the mixed reviews, the film has raked in 400 million yuan ($60 million) in its first weekend, to top the box-office charts.

Domestic media outlets say that the distributors have signed a special revenue-sharing contract with the filmmakers as they believe the film will earn at least 1 billion yuan.

Industry sources attribute the commercial success of the film to the fact that few quality films have been released in this period.