If you ask me, it’s a little late to rip off Indiana Jones. That train has sailed, baby. I don’t get it, China: you make all our stuff; how can you be so behind the times? You needed to rip off The Avengers or some other superhero movie; that’s where the money is right now.
Chinese Indiana Jones – say, is he, like, “Hunan Jones” in China? Anyway, Chinese Indy is Zhang Kylin (Jing Boran). He differs from Caucasian Indy in that he’s immortal, mysterious, and kinda boran (ifyouknowwhatI mean). He waylays a small white-guy army in Nepal at the start of the film in order to protect a gold playing card. The evil white guy wanted the whole set … what’s up with that? The cards lead to the secret, which is uncovered anyway by antique hand-held camera hound Wu Xie (Lu Han). For practice raiding, Wu plunders a local museum. Undeterred by the illegality of pillaging, the foolhardiness of his task, or the warnings of his uncle, the college-aged Wu picks some traps and steals a box.
Inside the box is some sort of mechanical trigger promising Hell on Earth if unleashed in the next eight days. Here’s where I’m guessing the subtitles lost me, because I’m sure that the timer was counting down a threat, but only one that would be possible if opened within the following eight days. So, naturally, there’s a rush back to the Himalayas to do some more grave robbing. Oh, and look at this, somehow they’ve attracted the evil white guy (now 50 years older) from the beginning of the film. Fellas … what is the hurry to unleash unspeakable evil?
Time Raiders is the kind of film that asks, “What if they spent the entire movie in the booby-trapped caverns where Indy finds the idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark?” That would be cool, right? Well, wrong, actually. Sure, the gambit shows a complete disregard for safety and history, which is good and fine, and having several pointless shootouts on sacred historical grounds seems pretty cool; truth is, however, it gets kinda old fighting off one chamber of CGI bugs and another chamber of hulking
plant men and then another of what has to be the time vortex from Through the Looking Glass and some snake woman and her posse. Time Raiders hinges a great deal on the personalities of Zhang and Wu, and neither, I’m afraid, is up to carrying a movie, even an adventure one.
What remains in Time Raiders is a lot of movie. There is no small here. Big stunts, big action, big gestures, big villains, and all the headache that goes with them. And I’m still bothered by the plot – why are raiding this tomb? Seriously. Why? What exactly did you expect to find that you brought an entire team of heavily armed men? Yes, they came in handy … I suppose … all movies like this need expandable gun fighters … but you’re gonna have to explain to me why they needed to be there in the first place. Doesn’t matter. This film will get no traction in the States.
♪Tomb keeps on gripping
Into the present
Tomb gets me trippin’, trippin’, trippin’
Something unpleasant
I want to pry like a beagle
Into a crypt
Pry like Tolkien’s Sméagol
Til the treasure has been ripped
Pry like der Spiegel
Get a grip
Oh, oh intern pollution♫
Not Rated, 124 Minutes
D: Daniel Lee
W: Uncle Three (Guessing this guy was named at a wrestling match)
Genre: Archaeology … can you dig it?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who have missed out on the joys of graverobbing
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Indiana Jones fans
♪ Parody inspired by “Fly Like an Eagle”
