The Tuxedo is not the worst of Jackie Chan’s American movies — that’d be The Medallion and The Spy Next Door — but close enough.
Chan plays Tong … James Tong, a mild-mannered cabbie with a lead foot and a Hooters T-shirt who one day is hired as the driver for billionaire Clark Devlin (Harry Potter vet Jason Isaacs), a secret agent with a gadget-equipped and strength-empowering techno-tuxedo. When he’s nearly killed by a skateboard bomb, James takes it upon himself to don the tux and continue Clark’s espionage work.
Said work has something to do with the world’s water supply being threatened, but it’s so poorly explained that you won’t know what’s going on until the end. Pairing up with James is the wonderful pair of Jennifer Love Hewitt (Can’t Hardly Wait) as an agency chemist. Although she initially has the air of being miscast, she acquits herself fairly well; all the cleavage shots work toward that admirable goal.
Even if Jackie’s English were good (every time he said “Clark Devlin,” I thought he said “Cock Devlin”), The Tuxedo still would be a difficult movie to understand. I’m not sure it ever intended to tell a lucid story; rather, its aim seems to be to put him in one demonstration of physical prowess after another. The ones that are 100 percent Chan are fun; the ones that are 50 percent CGI, not so much.
And that’s the movie’s biggest problem: It doesn’t quite know how to use him, and when it does, it muddles it up with confusing editing and poor direction by first-timer Kevin Donovan. By not using its star’s massive physical potential, it might as well be, I dunno, Craig Sheffer in The Tuxedo. As with the Rush Hour franchise, the most enjoyable part comes with the end-credit outtakes. —Rod Lott