The Myth

The Myth

Starring: Jackie Chan, Hee-seon Kim, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Mallika Sherawat, Ken Lo

Directed by: Jackie Chan

Reviewed by: Conor Flynn







• Trailers
• Music Videos gallery
• ‘Making of’ featurette
• Interview Gallery
• Deleted scenes
• Lost scenes
• Behind the scenes
• Just for laughs
• Premiere footage
• Easter Egg

Jackie Chan plays Jack Chan, a world renowned archaeologist and adventurer. Upon discovering a magical gemstone with anti-gravity matter, Jack sets out on an expedition to find an ancient lost shrine. This not only sees him run into a nefarious rival expedition, but the possibility that he may have links to a warrior from a past life…

The Myth is a mishmash of genres which feels unbalanced. It mixes action comedy and costume drama together with the end result that the action is too silly and the dramatics are far too serious. As separate entities, either of these elements would have made for better individual films, but as it is, it simply fails to work cohesively and coherently. The film is also very derivative, particularly a scene inside a cave that will brings back memories of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. Thankfully there are one or two saving graces, in particular, a spectacularly witty action sequence inside a glue factory which has to be seen to be believed. Jackie Chan also ably stretches outside his comfort zone in the costume drama scenes and is thoroughly engaging.

The DVD picture quality is sharp, colourful and without grain. Sound wise, the film is good, but could have been better. Included is a Cantonese track in 5.1 and 2.0. Both do an adequate job and are very clear. Also included is an English audio dub and unfortunately, this lets the disc down. It’s synced up reasonably enough, but the translation is sometimes jarringly incoherent. It is also marred by distinct American accents which feel misplaced. There is also the sense that the dub was done on the cheap i.e. the difference between ambient scenes interior and exterior is negligible.

The extras are spread over two discs. On the first disc, the usual obligatory trailers can be found, but there are also two music videos included and a ‘making of’ documentary, though this latter extra is very light weight on genuine information. The second disc contains the bulk of the extras. ‘Interview Gallery’ is simply extended raw footage of the ‘making of’ on disc one. The bulk of information on the production is contained here. Next up are two deleted scenes and three ‘lost scenes’. ‘Behind the scenes’ is self explanatory and shows more raw footage on set. None of these are all that interesting. ‘Just for laughs’ is the extras highlight. This consists of behind the scenes footage and is humorous to watch. ‘Premiere footage’ is the penultimate extra on the disc and rather dull at that. The final extra is a hidden Easter egg located in the lost scenes section.

The Myth is one of the better Jackie Chan efforts in the last ten years, but considering the benchmark was set so low recently, that wouldn’t be hard. You might want to rent this one first before buying.