AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

David Holt (rawiri42) Well! What does one say about this oriental version of a sort of mixture of Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure, Indiana Jones, James Bond and The Hangover (plus a few more)? Crazy? Yes. Funny? Sometimes. Action? Most of the time! I notice that some other reviewer has said that this was sprooked as Jackie Chan's last starring role and, the way he flung himself around in this one, that wouldn't surprise me one bit! The guy was 58 years old when Chinese Zodiac was made but moved like a 20-year-old! He deserves a very long rest!There were a couple of very noticeable (to me) anomalies that I couldn't quite reconcile myself to. One was where characters were handling gold bricks like they weighed next-to-nothing. Anyone who has actually handled one that size would know that a girl certainly couldn't hold it between her thumb and forefinger. Gold is bloody heavy! Believe me. The other was the skydiving scene which lasted so long that, at typically about 25000 metres per minute would have to have been from a height about three or four times the maximum height that the aircraft they jumped out of could fly. I wish I'd timed it but then I didn't know what was coming until afterwards.All in all though, a fun spoof that didn't require too much serious attention as long as you don't expect too much.

Peter Johnson I've probably seen at least 80% of Jackie's films, new and old, plenty more than once, but I was really disappointed at this. I watched the English dub (normally I'd prefer to watch the original language, subtitled into English) The script feels like they took every other line out at random, and the plot, such as it is, really suffers because of it. A decent scriptwriter handling the English version could have made all the difference.It's a shame because the production values are high, and the stunts are good (if a little fake in places, due to obvious wire removal shots, which is a shame because that is what I enjoyed most about the old films)

hkauteur This is a tricky movie to critique. First of all, Jackie Chan has stated that this is his last time performing his own stunts in a movie. So do I measure CZ12 as a standalone film or do I position it as a final act in the long line of Jackie Chan's filmography over the last 30 years?Secondly, what can I expect from Jackie Chan? As a final bow, what can he do to surprise me? He is long past his physical peak (in my opinion, his top physical peak was Police Story 2). After 20 years of growing up on his films, The "Jackie Chan Action Scene Formula" is forever embedded into my brain; I almost always know how his fight scenes end. In case you do not know what I'm talking about, here it is:There's a situation where Jackie Chan is being beaten by a group of people. The fight leads to an environment/a prop.Jackie Chan using the environment/prop, creatively defeats the entire group of people.There's a joke at the end that comes from the environment/prop. End scene. So, did Chinese Zodiac 12 surprise me? I would say 40% yes, 60% no.I watched a recent interview that Jackie Chan gave to a mainland show where he said that he did not like casting TV actors in his movies because they take way too much time to get through a scene of dialogue. It seems he went the other extreme, because the dramatic scenes are played out and edited way too quickly. It's like every dramatic scene was played out on fast-forward and often there is not a lot of time to digest what's going on. Even comedic moments are neutered from the lack of time to digest them. I found this to be problematic.Narrative wise, the story takes shortcuts. Characters act out of character at times for story convenience. And seriously, can anyone really buy Jackie Chan being a heartless money-grubbing thief? I'd have an easier time buying Tom Hanks playing a bad guy than Jackie Chan.So about the set pieces. For what he can't bring physically, Chan makes it up with scale and locales. The action set pieces are fun, some stand out more than others. My favorite was the bodyblading sequence at the beginning. That was a very tense sequence watching Jackie Chan go head first speeding down a highway. The story and action scenes in CZ12 ask the audience to recall Jackie Chan's past filmography, notably the two Armour of God movies (You can call this Armour of God 3, if you like). It even drew a few gags from it and there was one set that recalled the drug factory from Dragons Forever. This makes it impossible for me to critique it as a standalone film.Part of the film's story is a piece of issue-tainment addressing the issue of museums withholding historical artifacts from their home countries. It's an issue that Jackie Chan seems to care a lot about and he presents it as an international issue. Although the film treats this issue rather lightly and it does ultimately get buried under the trappings of a Jackie Chan movie, it's nice to see Chan raising an issue like this in a film.There are many personal touches like that here, it's very possible that Jackie Chan can just be a director in the future. There was one noteworthy part of the movie where Jackie Chan actually officially apologizes to his real-life wife for the time they've missed together all these years. They reportedly see each other once a year. This moved me by the end. It was not from the story of the film or from a well-earned dramatic catharsis, but because it felt like Jackie Chan was saying goodbye to me.For anybody who's unfamiliar with Chan, it's not a great movie by conventional rules nor would it gain him any new fans. For these people, I refer you to his earlier films, check out The Drunken Master and the Police Story films.For people who grew up on Jackie Chan movies like I did, I don't think I can ever stomach the idea of Jackie Chan saying goodbye. My earlier memories of films were of Jackie Chan movies. Watching this movie, I was moved, laughed and exhilarated, all the time thinking maybe this was the last time. If Jackie Chan really chose to retire performing action, CZ12 is a good way to go out.

steve beard I saw "Chinese Zodiac", starring Jackie Chan-The Karate Kid-2010, the Rush Hour films; Oliver Platt-X-Men: First Class, Lake Placid and Xingtong Yao-this is her second film with Amor being her first.This is a milestone of a movie for a couple of reasons. First, is because this is supposedly Jackie Chan's last action movie-he said he is retiring from martial arts movies because of his age and injuries but will still make regular movies. Second, is because Jackie got into the Guinness World Record for 'Most Credits in One Movie' for this film. He has 15, including writer, producer, director, fight choreographer, music composer and, Oh Yeah, actor-the previous record was held by Robert Rodriguez with 11. Anyway, Jackie plays a mercenary that recovers lost artifacts. In this case, he is hired by Oliver to find the 12 bronze heads of the Chinese Zodiac that were stolen from the Chinese. Xingtong plays one of Jackie's team members. There are lots of spectacular stunt work and amazing fight sequences, as usual for a Jackie Chan film and the end credits have the usual bloopers and out takes. There is an added bonus at the end where they show clips from Jackie's earlier films, which I'm sure, as a tribute. It's rated "PG-13" for the violence and some partial nudity-Jackie, not his female co-stars-and a running time of 1 hour & 49 minutes. I'm a big Jackie Chan fan and really enjoyed this film, so I would buy this on Blu-Ray. It's in limited release-at the theater I saw it at, they only had one showing.