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At-A-Glance Film Reviews

The Accidental Spy (2001)

Rating

[3.0]

Reviews and Comments

The Accidental Spy is not a very good whole: it's not a clearly told story, it's more convoluted than it should be, and too much time is spent on irrelevant sorts of things. The entire climax of the film, for example, is an action set piece that doesn't even involve the story. But Jackie Chan has that affecting personality of his that keeps us interested. I liked, too, how continually creative the film is. We are used to seeing Jackie make use of unlikely props for action scenes, but here, as in the superior Who Am I?, he uses props creatively in other ways too, solving a number of different types of problems, everything from escaping tight situations to narrowly avoiding indecent exposure, as well. The Accidental Spy may not be a great movie, but it's certainly an interesting one.

Note: The American dubbed version removes an entire subplot involving Anthrax. The Hong Kong version, about 20 minutes longer, is available with English subtitles. It makes a little (just a little) more sense than the American does, although it still suffers from narrative ambiguity within several individual scenes.

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