Director – Leo Zhang, Screenplay – Cui Siwei, Erica Xia-Hou & Leo Zhang, Producers – Paul Currie, Aileen Li & Javier Zhang, Photography – Tony Cheung & Jack Jian, Music – Peng Pei, Makeup Effects – Wang Naipeng, Production Design – Meicheng Huang. Production Company – Hopi Pictures/Youku/Wanda Pictures/Perfect Village/Jetsen Cultural Media Group/TUS Film Television/Dadi Film/Funhigh/58 Pictures.
Cast
Jackie Chan (Lin Dong), Show Lo (Leeson), Nanan Ou-Yang (Nancy), Erica Xia-Hou (Susan), Tess Haubrich (Woman in Black), Callan Mulvey (Andre), Kim Gyngell (Dr James), Elena Cai (Xixi), Cosentino (Himself)
Plot
Lin Dong, a police officer in China, is heading to where his daughter Xixi is undergoing an operation for leukaemia. Instead he is called in to act as part of a armed protective detail for Dr James. This turns into a heavy shootout as the detail is attacked by people outfitted with hi-tech armour and weapons. Thirteen years later. Lin Dong has left the force and is in Sydney, Australia, shadowing Nancy, the now grown Xixi, whose memory has been erased by the operation. The same group of heavily armoured people come determined to snatch Nancy, wanting the artificial heart that she has been given, along with the advanced blood that has the capability to regenerate wounds. In order to protect her, Lin Dong is forced to collaborate with Leeson, the persistent young guy that has shown an interest in Nancy.
Jackie Chan emerged as a top star in Hong Kong action movies during the 1970s, usually ones that blended martial arts and comedy – see classics like Drunken Master (1978) and sequels, Police Story (1985) and sequels, Armour of God (1987) and sequels, and Double Dragon (1992). Chan became a name in the West following Rumble in the Bronx (1995). He had hits with the Hollywood-made likes of Rush Hour (1998) and Shanghai Noon (2000), and sequels to either. The success of these quickly began to pale with a string of flops that Chan signed onto in the 00s with the likes of The Tuxedo (2002), The Medallion (2003), Around the World and 80 Days (2004) and The Spy Next Door (2010) where Chan’s nimble stunt artistry gave way to broad comedy. Chan returns to something of his heyday with this Chinese-produced film, although at age 63 is a clearly a good deal less physical with his stunts than he used to be.
Bleeding Steel has a decent budget thrown at it and aims for a spectacular Action Movie approach. Director Leo Zhang crafts a furious shootout that occupies that first ten minutes or so of the film, which sets the stage perfectly. There are a host of similar chases and fight scenes that occur throughout. The most spectacular of these is a fight scene that takes place on the struts of one of the shells of the Sydney Opera House with Chan at one point sliding down the roof.
Jackie Chan sliding down the roof of the Sydney Opera House
My main issue with the film is that it co-opts many SF elements. There’s an army of near-invincible Super-Soldiers. There’s a black hat villain who suffers from facial disfigurement and flies about in a Star Destroyer-like ship base where the film has clearly drawn from the Star Wars series without too much effort made to disguise the source of inspiration. The daughter (and it appears later Jackie too) is given the transplant of the artificial heart and a blood that allows regeneration.
Despite all of these tropes, I spent some 45 minutes of the film’s running time trying to get a handle on what it was about, why the characters were racing around after the daughter and who the super-soldiers and woman in black pursuing everybody was. More than anything, Bleeding Steel feels like a film where the script had assembled assorted SF and action elements with no real feeling for them. There is a chase, action sequences, a villain and henchpeople because the genre demands it but you are still left wondering why people are doing things.
