Vanguard review – an outrageous waste of Jackie Chan

There’s an argument to be made that a film featuring a jet-ski machete fight on the edge of a waterfall, robotic surveillance wasps, solid gold supercars, weaponised attack hyenas and Jackie Chan doesn’t actually need to be good, in the conventional sense of the word. And with its multiple locations (London, Beijing, Dubai, Zambia, India) and efficiently packaged moments of nationalistic fervour, this action picture, which pits Chinese covert security organisation Vanguard against the scenery-mangling forces of evil, is clearly aiming for the pulpy escapist end of the market.

But even so, there’s precious little fun to be had in this self-important mess of a movie. Chan plays the head of Vanguard, but spends an awful lot of time in the field with his elite agents. Their mission: to rescue a businessman and his eco-YouTuber daughter Fareeda (Ruohan Xu) from villains who see them as the route to a missing fortune and, ultimately, some kind of genocidal ultra-weapon.

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The score feels like being trepanned by music; the story, like the VFX action sequences, is illogical and hacked together. It’s an unforgivable waste of Jackie Chan, action-movie legend, reduced here to pratfalls and gurning double takes.