Skiptrace (2016)

There's a version of Skiptrace that works brilliantly. Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville, globe-trotting mayhem, mismatched personalities bouncing off each other across continents. You can practically picture it. The problem is that the version that actually got made is a pale, frustrating shadow of that idea.

Chan plays a Hong Kong detective on the trail of a notorious gambler, and Knoxville is the loud, skint American conman who blunders into the middle of it all and ends up as an unwilling partner. On paper, that's a cracking setup. In practice, it's a lot of running around looking busy without ever really catching fire. I kept waiting for the film to click into gear, and it just... didn't.

Look, Chan is still Chan. There's an ease and a physical grace to everything he does that no amount of mediocre scripting can completely extinguish. A handful of action sequences show genuine flickers of the inventiveness that made films like Rumble in the Bronx and Police Story 4: First Strike such a joy. He's working harder than the material deserves, and you feel it. Knoxville, for his part, commits fully to the cowardly, grinning scammer routine, and I don't want to dismiss him entirely. He has a certain goofy watchability. But his schtick is so particular, so rooted in the Jackass brand of chaos, that it struggles to find a natural rhythm alongside Chan's more disciplined screen presence.

That's really the heart of the issue. The chemistry between them never properly ignites. The banter that the film is banking on, that Rush Hour style push-and-pull that made me love Rush Hour so much, just isn't here in any meaningful way. There are moments where you can see what they're going for, where the energy almost tips into something fun, and then the scene moves on and the opportunity is gone. It's like watching two people who've been told they have great chemistry rather than two people who actually do.

The plot is globe-trotting in scope and forgettable in execution. Chase, fight, joke, repeat. It hits its marks dutifully without ever surprising you or making you lean forward. The humour leans too heavily on Knoxville's prankster energy, which might land more consistently if the film gave it room to breathe, but the pacing drags in all the wrong places and the whole thing starts to feel like a very long stopover at an airport you've been through too many times before.

None of this is to say Skiptrace is unwatchable. It's not offensive, it's not a disaster, and if you stumble across it late on a Saturday night with nowhere better to be, you'll probably survive it without wanting your time back. It's a perfectly serviceable 3 a.m. channel-flip, and there's a place in the world for that. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But Chan has shown, time and again, that he can do so much more with a good partner and a sharp script. And the mismatched buddy formula, when it works, can produce something genuinely special. Shanghai Noon (2000) is proof of that, a film that understood how to build real warmth between two leads who shouldn't fit together. Skiptrace never figures that out. It settles for adequate when it had every ingredient to be something worth talking about.

Two and a half stars. A missed opportunity dressed up in a reasonable jacket, going nowhere particularly interesting.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2016  | Watched: 2025-10-16

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