Te wu mi cheng (2001)

At a Hong Kong shopping center, Buck Yuen's (Jackie Chan's) intuition warns him. He saves a robbery's loot and gets on television, ends up in Istanbul via South Korea, and accidentally becomes a spy. Fortunately, he knows Kung Fu.

Director:

Teddy Chan

Writers:

Rod Dean (English adaptation), Ivy Ho

Stars:

Jackie Chan, Min Kim, Eric Tsang

2 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jackie Chan	...	Buck Yuen
Eric Tsang	...	Many Liu
Vivian Hsu	...	Yong
Min Kim	...	Carmen Wong (as Kim Min Jeong)
Hsing-Kuo Wu	...	Lee Sang-Zen (as Wu Hsing Kuo)
Murat Yilmaz	...	Celik
Alfred Cheung	...	Cheung the Lawyer
Lillian Ho	...	Candice
Tat-Ming Cheung	...	Tsui / Stan
Vincent Kok	...	Moving Worker
Hang-Sang Poon	...	Rich Man
Paulyn Sun	...	Rich Man's Wife
Ping Ha	...	Cleaning Lady (as Ha Ping)
Ken Chang	...	Cop at Mall
Glory Simon	...	TCN Field Reporter

Storyline

This action movie unfolds with the story of Bei, a salesman at a workout equipment store, who harbors dreams of adventures. It all starts when on one normal dull day, Bei follows his instincts to trail two suspicious looking men into an alley. When he realizes that these men are robbing a jewelry store, he jumps into action to foil their plans. Soon after Bei meets Liu, a private investigator who convinces Bei that he may be the long-lost son of a rich Korean businessman. In no time, Bei is on his way to fulfill his dreams of adventure and fortune traveling to Korea and even exotic Turkey. As Bei is drawn deeper into the game of cat and mouse, he realizes he has become the key to locating a new, highly addictive narcotic. With an assortment of characters fighting him along the way, will Bei succeed in finding the drug himself?

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Plot Keywords:

slapstick comedy | fighting | spy | surprise after end credits | scene after end credits | 

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Taglines:

Ordinary guy. Extraordinary spy

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Crime | Mystery | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for strong action violence, some drug content and nudity

Details

Official Sites:

Golden Harvest Official site

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese Mandarin English Korean French Turkish

Release Date:

18 January 2001 (Hong Kong)

Also Known As:

The Accidental Spy

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Box Office

Budget:

HKD 200,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Golden Harvest Company,Panfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

108 min

Sound Mix:

DTS (English version) SDDS (English version) Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Teddy Chan: Taxi Driver.

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Goofs

After the escape from the shed where Buck saves Yong, the masked assailants open the door, where a dead person lies in the shot. When the door opens, the dead person twitches and blinks.

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Crazy Credits

After the outtakes, Buck accepts a mission in Verona, Italy. He sets someone up to get arrested.

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Alternate Versions

The US version is cut by 20+ minutes.

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Connections

Referenced in Mic Macs à Tire-Larigot (2009)

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Soundtracks

Gong Don Ci
(uncredited)
Written by Liu Xue An and Cao Xue Qin
Performed by Vivian Hsu

User Reviews

Chan is missing, unfortunately

Jackie Chan's greatest weakness in his movies is predictability: you know the good triumphs over evil, the good guys are easy to identify, Jackie drop-kicks some butt, and he takes time to save kids and babies (not to mention babes, who sometimes save him). You know that if he gets the girl, he doesn't get very far (PG all the way).

In his best movies, this is his greatest strength, too: against the repeated backdrop of white and black hats, you're never quite sure how he's going to manage to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. You know he's going to get cornered by 6 black hats with 18 weapons in some storage room...and somehow use whatever's stored there to do away with the evil-doers.

Unfortunately, in the Accidental Spy, we're not kept guessing very long. The fight scenes are overly predictable (and, too often, the victim of a punch will start rolling their head back before they're punched). The plot is as unimportant to the Jackie Chan machine as usual, but, unlike other movies of his, the characters aren't memorable. The love-interest is lovely, but not interesting. The spy-who-coulda-have-loved-Jackie is relegated to making plot-digressing phone calls ("did you order a helicopter?").

And it's too bad, because there's otherwise some good material here: drug kingpins and orphans, lost parents, competing spy agencies, and beautiful locations (especially those Istanbul and other parts of Turkey). It's too bad that his escape from a Turkish bathhouse is wasted in this movie (you try to confront a half-dozen apes with only your bath towel to save you...and then not even the towel).

The dubbing doesn't help. Instead of offering the film in its original Chinese with subtitles (easily possible in this digital age), we're stuck with dubbing that sucks away what little life remains in these two-dimensional characters.

I really like Chan's movies, but he could have phoned his performance in for this one. Chan, unfortunately, is missing from his own movie.