Shanghai Noon/Shanghai Knights

SHANGHAI NOON PLOT:
When Princess Pei-Pei (played by Lucy Lui) is taken to America and held hostage, the Chinese Imperial Guards are sent to bring her back. It’s a harsh new world for Chon Wang (played by Jackie Chan) in the United States and it’s already taken the life of his uncle. With his uncle dead and the princess still missing, Chon befriends an unlikely helper in the outlaw Roy O’Bannon (played by Owen Wilson). What starts off as a reluctant partnership between the two builds into a friendship that just might get the two killed before they can save the girl and find the gold.

 
SHANGHAI KNIGHTS PLOT:
 Getting a letter in the mail from his sister Chon Lin (played by Fann Wong) that their father was killed, Chon Wang quickly leaves his post as the Sheriff of Carson City, Nevada to go after the killer. Having no money to pay for his ticket to London, Chon travels to New York City to enlist his old friend Roy O'Bannon to help him find a way over seas. The help that he gets was not what he expected but the two friends make it to London to learn that Lin is in trouble and that the killer will be harder to bring to justice than originally thought.

 
ACTING:
 I got to admit that I'm already biased as to the acting in this movie because I've liked Jackie Chan for a very long time and I even went to both of these movies when they first came out in the theater. Jackie Chan, as I call him, is a ninja man, and he does more than just act in these movies, he does his trademark marital arts moves. Sure they acting is corney, sure the dialog is choppy and at times Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson don't seem to be syncing with each other, but I still enjoyed both movies. The first one of course is the better of the two and the acting is much better but with a new plot and a new location to make Jackie Chan do all those cool tricks he does, I just can't complain. I'm also a fan of Owen Wilson, which just make the movies even better. He's a funny actor that can make a few funny faces, not as many or as skilled as Jackie Chan is, but he does have a decent feel for comedy.

 
ORIGINALITY:
 Not the most original plot for a movie, taking two unlikely guys, one that is part of the law but comes from another country and the other an outlaw who wants to make the other loosen up some.. These movies also don't contain any real new martial arts material from Jackie Chan that you can watch in most of his other movies. None of that stops the movies from being funny and with the combination of the unlikely team up comedy being put with the action/comedy of Jackie Chan the Shanghai movies end up being fun to watch. They also feature what I like the most about Jackie Chan movies, the end credits where we get to see bloopers and outtakes from the filming and some of the stunts that went wrong for Jackie Chan. I love these and can't get enough of it.

 
BLU RAY OF THE TWO MOVIES:
This I suppose is the most important part of this review considering the movies have been out for a number of years, there's not much more I can say about them. Though now you can get both movies on the one Blu Ray and that's what I want to talk about.. First off having both movies on one disc is nice and convenient because now all I have to do is put the one disc in the player and I'm good to go. However, just because it's easy to be able to watch both movies back to back if I want to without having to change out discs does not make the Blu Ray good. The transfer over to Blu Ray is not kind for either of these movies. There is so much noise and grain in the picture quality that I might as well be watching them on a old VHS tape and not a Blu Ray. Not only that but the audio quality was too low where it forced me to turn my TV volume up to 25 just so I could make out what was being said. I've seen some better looking shows on DVD that came out from the 70's. This Blu Ray kind of surprised me with how it looks like nothing really was done to improve the quality. The only saving grace for the Blu Ray is that it includes the speical features for both movies that include bloopers and deleted scenes. If not for having both on one disc and for the special features this Blu Ray would be useless to watch.

BUY/RENT/BORROW/DON'T BOTHER:
 I wouldn't spend my money on this if I knew how it looked before hand. I already have Shanghai Noon on DVD and it looks much better than this Blu Ray does. So if you already have the movies then yeah I suppose it would be a good buy with the low price for both movies, but if you already have one or both on DVD than just ignore this Blu Ray.