Shanghai Noon (2000) Shanghai Noon (2000) [Direct/No-Annotate]

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Shanghai Noon) | Backbeats (Shanghai Noon)

Quick Facts

• Director: Tom Dey (feature debut)
• Screenplay: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
• Starring: Jackie Chan (Chon Wang), Owen Wilson (Roy O'Bannon), Lucy Liu (Princess Pei Pei), Roger Yuan (Lo Fong), Brandon Merrill (Falling Leaves), Xander Berkeley (Marshal Nathan Van Cleef)
• Cinematography: Daniel Mindel
• Editor: Richard Chew
• Music: Randy Edelman
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Release Date: May 26, 2000 (US)
• MPAA Rating: PG-13
• Distributor: Touchstone Pictures / Spyglass Entertainment

Overview

A Forbidden City Imperial Guard pursues a kidnapped princess from Beijing to Carson City, Nevada in 1881 and discovers, scene by scene, that the Imperial playbook he was issued does not run on Western roads. Jackie Chan's Chon Wang spends the first half of the film trying to be a procedural Imperial Guard in country that has no idea what an Imperial Guard is, and the second half discovering that the duty he is actually carrying is to the person — to Pei Pei, to the partnership Owen Wilson's Roy O'Bannon offers him in a county jail — rather than to the institution that issued the order. The midpoint is the moment Lo Fong cuts off Wang's queue and tells him he can never go back to China; the climax is a Carson City church fight in which Wang takes possession of the West on his own terms by quoting Roy's earlier "the sun may rise where we come from, but here is where it sets" speech back to Lo Fong's face. The film closes with Wang as a U.S. lawman partnered with Roy, the better/sufficient quadrant resolving cleanly: the Imperial Guard has become an American lawman without losing his honor — he has just re-located what honor is owed to.