Movie Review: 1911

Jackie Chan goes epic

By By G. Allen Johnson
Houston Chronicle

Happy 100th, Jackie Chan.

There’s a celebratory feeling concerning 1911, an impressively big-scale war epic that not only commemorates the centennial of the Xinhai Revolution, which brought Sun Yat-sen to power, but is also being marketed as the 57-year-old action star’s 100th movie. It’s opening in Houston just two weeks after it premiered in China.

The problem with the film, which is co-directed by Chan and Zhang Li, is that its scale is a bit too ambitious. The story of Sun (Winston Chao) and the rebellion against the Qing Dynasty (Joan Chen plays the Empress Dowager) is packed with so many characters and subtitled history lessons it barely allows its excellent main cast room to maneuver.

Chan, though, is very good in an all-dramatic role as a rebel general. There are lots of battle scenes, well-filmed, but only one martial arts scene. It seems out of place but is most welcome nonetheless.