[This review was originally written in October 2017 and is now being published to coincide with the digital home media release. For an explanation of this, visit my Fall 2017 Important Update post.]
In The Foreigner, a Chinese businessman's life is turned upside down when his daughter is killed in a terrorist attack. When the British bureaucracy keeps Mr. Quan in the dark, he then takes it upon himself to find those responsible and seek justice at whatever lengths necessary.
The Foreigner is overseen by Martin Campbell and features Jackie Chan's over-due return to American action films. These two elements were a source of contention in my anticipation for the film. On one hand, I was excited to see Chan back onscreen. However, I was apprehensively excited due to Campbell's especially uneven résumé that features the distinguished James Bond reboot Casino Royale as well as the lousy Green Lantern. So you're probably now wondering which end of the spectrum The Foreigner fell onto, and I must report it landed smack dab in the middle.
The Foreigner contains all the necessary ingredients to create either an action-revenge tale or a political thriller, but Campbell and his screenwriter try to have it both ways when adapting Stephen Leather's novel The Chinaman. While this is certainly possible, it's really not recommended. An applicable analogy would be that The Foreigner is like a unconventional puzzle. You can certainly force the pieces together, but the finished product will be misshapen. At its best, The Foreigner is representative of an entertaining action-revenge flick. The action sequences spread through this portion of the film are riveting, but the film is ultimately bogged down by political entanglements.
There are large stretches of the film where Jackie Chan's character is nowhere to be seen and the revenge plot feels like an afterthought, instead overtaken by all the monotonous political jargon. While I appreciate that David Marconi took the initiative to consider real-world implications in laying out the U.K.'s political landscape, he let that story-arc outweigh the infinitely-more interesting revenge plot when crafting the screenplay. I'm not entirely opposed to the political element, but in this case, there was simply an egregious, unnecessary amount so the story feels unfocused.
The asset that stimulates The Foreigner is undoubtedly Jackie Chan's performance. The grief-stricken character Quan opens up new opportunities for Chan to prove himself capable of providing versatile performances that deviate from his campier kung-fu outings. Chan excels in delivering a unexpectedly layered performance, communicating an expansive emotional depth in the heavier scenes. While I wouldn't go as far to calling the performance awards worthy, Chan really enriches the average action movie surrounding him.
Opposite Chan, Pierce Brosnan reunites with his Goldeneye director to step into the antagonistic department as former IRA insurgent-turned-politician, Liam Hennessy. Brosnan proves to be more than up to the task of barking out orders in a heavy Irish accent, while imbuing Hennessy with the obligatory gravitas required by the role, maintaining a menacing temperament to articulate himself as a formidable force for Chan to grapple with over the course of the film.
Despite an amusing ending, The Foreigner ultimately suffers from trying to mesh the storylines and ideas behind two different movies. There are a great deal of fun moments sprinkled throughout the film, but they're spread too far and too thin to make any substantial impression on the viewer. Thankfully, Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan's ensuing cat-and-mouse games elevate the film so you're not completely concentrated on the doldrums of England's political arena.
