The Foreigner (2017) * *

Directed by:  Martin Campbell

Starring:  Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Charlie Murphy, Katie Leung

Those expecting a Jackie Chan actioner showcasing his normal exuberance will be sorely disappointed with The Foreigner.    Here, Chan plays a grieving father of a teenage girl killed in a terrorist bombing in London.    He doesn't take the death lying down.    He wants justice, and not in the courtroom, but in his own Rambo kind of way.    It turns out he has a Past, in which he was somehow trained by U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam, and even though he is now in his 60s, he can kick butt with the best of them and create bombs seemingly at will.    He is supposed to be a London restaurant owner, but he seems to have more bomb ingredients than cake ingredients handy.

I guess The Foreigner represents a change of pace from the typical Chan performance, in which he famously does his own stunts and has a really good time doing them.     He is a tireless killing machine in this movie, kind of like the Rocky Balboa of vengeful fathers, but he doesn't smile much, which I suppose is understandable considering his daughter's death and his Past.    You will see what I mean on that.    The pity is how The Foreigner rushes so quickly into its plot it doesn't take time to establish Quan (Chan) as a hero we can sympathize with.     The bomb goes off soon after the opening credits end, and we now are immersed in Quan's quest to locate the bombers. 

Quan gains a lead in an Irish Deputy Minister to Something or Other named Liam Hennessy (Brosnan), who was once an IRA member and no stranger to conducting violent bombings.   But, now he is a British government appointee and wishes to maintain a tentative peace accord in Northern Ireland.     It is amusing to hear Brosnan, an Irish actor himself, give us such an exaggerated Irish brogue, in which he sounds friendly even when issuing ultimatums to find the conspirators.    He isn't much interested in helping Quan, but is instead protecting his posh life and career in the British government.    Hennessy's hollow words of sympathy and feigning having no knowledge of the bombers' identities forces Quan to track Hennessy like a bloodhound.   

In between Quan killing two, three, or four men at a time, slinking around people's homes undetected planting bombs, and running away from his enemies, Quan just sits around looking intense and undaunted.     The Foreigner is a film in desperate need of a sympathetic hero, but we simply don't have one, and thus no real reason to care.     Director Campbell directed Casino Royale, and Brosnan as Bond in Goldeneye, so he surely knows his way around an action scene, but the movie bogs itself down with too much political intrigue, too many bombs, too much incredulity, and not much human element.