Shanghai Noon

Shanghai Noon is a 2000 movie starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson as Chan's western sidekick. Directed by Tom Dey, it was written by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough. The movie, set in Nevada and other parts of the west in the 19th century, is a juxtapostion of a western with a Jackie Chan Kung Fu action movie with extended martial arts sequences. It also has elements of comedy and the "Buddy Cop" film genre, as it involves two men of different personalities and ethnicities (a Chinese imperial guard and a Western outlaw) who team up to stop a crime.

The title (a pun on the Gary Cooper classic High Noon) and several names used in the film pay homage to earlier westerns. Chan's character, "Chon Wang" or sometimes called "Poophead" by Owen's character, is meant to sound like John Wayne, and the antagonist, Nathan Van Cleef, is an homage to Lee Van Cleef, who played "the Bad" in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, among other roles in major westerns. In addition, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson's character) reveals at the end that his real name is Wyatt Earp, which Chon laughingly dismisses as "a terrible cowboy name".

A sequel, Shanghai Knights, was released in 2003.

Taglines:

• The Classic Western Gets A Kick In The Pants.
• The old west meets the far east.
• The first kung-fu western ever.
• Western Action, Eastern Flavor, Won Ton Of Adventure

Plot

This movie is about Chon Wang, who is an imperial guard of China. After the princess Pei-Pei is abducted and taken to America, Wang is sent with others to find her and bring her back. Roy O'Bannon is an outlaw who ends up hijacking the train Wang is on with his gang. When Wallace, a member of Roy's gang, kills Wang's uncle, he decides to try chasing them down. However, the gang is well-armed and Chon's only choice is to unhinge the cars and get away with the engine. In the process, Wallace takes over the gang from O'Bannon, and they leave him buried up to his chin in the desert sand.

Meanwhile, Pei-Pei finds out that the man who abducted her, Lo Fong, is running a Chinese slave camp. Fong himself left the Forbidden City and was viewed as a traitor by the Chinese.

When Wang finds Roy buried in the sand, he demands to know the direction to Carson City. He puts two chop sticks in Roy's mouth and tells him to dig, and Roy gave him "bad directions" and sent him over the mountain. When Wang comes out the other side of the mountain, he gets involved with a Native tribe by saving a girl chased by the Crow tribe and ends up getting married to a Native girl, Falling Leaves (Brandon Merrill). When he and his new wife get to the next town, she promises him that she will look out for him. Inside a tavern in the town, Wang finds Roy and, in anger, starts a fight with him that turns into a barroom brawl. The two of them get sent to prison, and after they escape (thanks to Chon's wife), they decide that they will become friends. O'Bannon himself was a little motivated by hearing that there was plenty of the Chinese Emperor's gold being exchanged as a ransom for the princess.

When they get to Carson City, they find themselves in a showdown with Lo Fong's ally Marshal Nathan Van Cleef, and the two of them narrowly escape. They go to a hideout, which is more of a burlesque house, but they get found out by Van Cleef, and are arrested. They find out that Lo Fong is behind the kidnapping, and he cuts off Wang's hair (known as a queue or bianzi) so that he loses his honour and can never go back to China. However as they are about to be hanged, they once again escape, in part thanks again to Chon Wang's Native wife.

The next day, the two partners go to the ransom point, a church in the middle of nowhere. The three imperial guards come with the gold (Wang had become separated from them during the train robbery), and Lo Fong has the princess in hand. However matters get complicated when O'Bannon springs a gun on Lo Fong, and Wang confronts his fellow guards regarding his imperial duty (as the princess does not wish to go back to China, but the guards have their orders to bring her back). As well, Van Cleef comes out with two guns and remarks that they have themselves "a Mexican standoff, but I don't see any Mexicans." As the Chinese fight amongst themselves (Lo Fong included), Van Cleef and O'Bannon wage in a gunfight. O'Bannon miraculously pierces Van Cleef with his last bullet while also being missed by every one of Van Cleef's, and Lo Fong is killed, the method used is hanging, by a joint effort between Chon and the princess. The Imperial Guards decide that they will let the princess stay.

Wallace and his gang also come up to the church, and demand that Roy and Wang (or The Shanghai Kid as he was called) come out and fight. But when the two of them get outside the church to face Wallace, Natives from all around surround the gang and O'Bannon tells them that they are going to jail. At the end of the movie, Roy and Wang are shown as sheriffs and are waiting for the next train robbery to occur. Roy and Falling Leaves (the Native girl) also passionately kiss each other during a Chinese cultural exhibit while Pei-Pei holds Chon's hand.

Box Office

The movie grossed $99,274,467 according to box office mojo.

Cast

• Jackie Chan .... Chon Wang
• Owen Wilson .... Roy O'Bannon
• Lucy Liu .... Princess Pei Pei
• Brandon Merrill .... Falling Leaves
• Roger Yuan .... Lo Fong
• Xander Berkeley .... Marshal Nathan Van Cleef
• Jason Connery .... Andrews
• Walton Goggins .... Wallace
• P. Adrien Dorval .... Blue
• Rafael Baez .... Vasquez

Lucy Liu won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for her role in Shanghai Noon.

Trivia

• Just like Chon Wang's name is meant to be a homonyn of John Wayne, Roy O' Bannon, at the end, reveals that he changed his name, his real name is Wyatt Earp (a famous cowboy). Chon then remarks that Wyatt Earp is a terrible name for a cowboy (the same joke made in the beginning when Roy first hears Chon's name.
• The idea that a urine-soaked silk shirt is strong enough to bend the bars of a prison cell when wrapped around them and twisted was tested on episode 26, season 2 of MythBusters. It was determined that the shirt would break long before the bars would in real life. However this was also examined mathematically by Hollywood Science, and Open University program, and found to be possible.
• Owen Wilson's character was angered when he was told that Wallace (the traitor in Roy's gang) is from Texas. Wilson, who plays Roy, is a Texan.
• The hangman's statement, "Nothing personal, boys," was an ad-lib.
• The Chinese characters shown in the background during the opening credits are excerpts from a translation of "The Frog Prince."
• Chon Wang's actual Chinese name appears in the Chinese subtitle of the movie as 江文 (or in pinyin: "jīang wén" as pronounced by the character). However, the name is revealed in sequel Shanghai Knights to be 姜文, which is a homophone in Mandarin but with a different surname from 江文. When Roy addresses Chon Wang, the Chinese translation of "John Wayne" or "John" is 小江 or "Little Jiang".
• The catchy quote "I don't know karate, but I know crazy" is actually a line from James Brown's song, "The Payback".
• The song playing during the first bar-fight sequence is the same song that plays during the 'dirty dozen' style intro of the characters in Armageddon, an earlier Owen Wilson feature.
• Actress Brandon Merrill, who plays Falling Leaves, is a real-life rodeo champion.
• During the scene where Roy and Chon are drunk in the hotel, director Tom Dey hoped to include a drunken kung fu scene as an homage to The Legend of Drunken Master. There was no time to choreograph such a scene, so Dey showed Chon blowing bubbles from his mouth, as Wong Fei-hung does in the Drunken Master movie.
• Yuen Biao who was a fight choreographer and stunt double in this film appears briefly as a fighter in the saloon fight scene.
• The Mexican standoff was an homage to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Sheriff Van Cleef is obviously an homage to Lee Van Cleef, who played the villain Sentenza in that film and was involved in its Mexican standoff climax.
• The hanging scene, in which Chon's wife shoots the noose from Roy's neck is an homage to The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly, indicated by her hat and poncho which are reminiscent of the Man with No Name.
• The scene where Chon gets his hair cut off, if one looks closely at the very end of the scene, when he's turned gasping in the camera, you can still see it on the back of his head.
• Jackie Chan's Character name, "Chon Wang", is homage to a scene in the movie Rush Hour. In Rush Hour, Chris Tucker instructs Jackie's character to look at the Grauman's Chinese Theater footprint of John Wayne, Inspector Lee responds by saying "Chon Wang?”

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