jackie chan kicks his way into van damme territory with twin dragons , an embarrassingly bland action comedy of mistaken identities .
chan plays separated - at - births boomer and john ma , whose drastically different paths . . .
aw , forget the plot description , it 's not even worth the space .
but let 's face it .
no one goes to jackie chan movies for the plot anyway .
the scenes where nothing happens in chan 's films have always been little more than glue thriftily spread to hold the action sequences together .
in the case of twin dragons , however , the tiresome plot - driving scenes fritter away so much of the movie that you almost want to shout ( at the risk of demeaning the artistic value of cinema ) , " get to the good part already ! " most of the film is devoted to showing the brothers ' efforts to hide the other 's existence from their own acquaintances .
why it is necessary to do this is not satisfactorily explained , but neither are a lot of aspects of the plot .
the twins ' love interests , demure club - singer barbara ( chan - film regular maggie cheung ) and lusty bride - hopeful tammy ( nina li chi ) , get disoriented in all the brouhaha , yet strangely seem not to mind that they are not sure which brother they are in love with .
the scenes describing the boys ' bumbling antics get stretched so thin
we stop caring who chan is supposed to be in any given shot ( in several shots , in fact , even the make - up and hair people seem to forget which brother is which . ) .
even chan 's so - corny - it's - funny humor is off - kilter in this outing .
some of the gags are so carefully innocuous they 're annoying .
a case in point : whenever anyone sees the brothers together , they fall to the ground in a dead faint .
are we laughing yet ?
as usual , the final showdown is the film 's jewel , a tour de force display of chan ' s agility and grace .
never mind that it 's not clear how the brothers end up fighting suited bad guys inside an automobile crash - testing facility .
it 's all good fun , but too little too late .
perhaps chan 's next movie should just be a collection of the last fight sequences of all of his movies .
they could call it jackie chan 's the final fight scenes , and everybody would go home happy .
reviewed april 14 , 1999 at loews theaters white marsh , white marsh , md .
not satisfactorily explained so carefully innocuous they 're annoying the tiresome plot - driving scenes fritter away an embarrassingly bland action comedy off - kilter too little too late