‘The Foreigner’ Doesn’t Reinvent The Action Movie But It Damn Sure Repackages Jackie Chan

Let’s be honest here, you already know from the trailer that The Foreigner was going for a Taken/ Law Abiding Citizen vibe but with Jackie Chan in the lead. We’re seeing more and more of these movie types about a wronged person set out on a path of vengeance. We can be straight up that The Foreigner isn’t breaking new ground here, however, the movie does bear some unique fruit. I feel like I went too far with the “breaking ground” analogy and it forced me into a metaphor for agriculture and harvesting. I’m just saying, Jackie Chan shows up in a totally different capacity this time around. The film opens with Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan) picking up his daughter and taking her shopping in London. Quan doing the father-daughter shit. We see how “eager and anxious” Quan’s daughter is to get a dress for this school event. Things take a turn when the shop she was in explodes. We then come to find out that this was an orchestrated attack by the Authentic IRA (Irish Republican Army). The film gets rooted in the uneasiness between the British and Irish relations. When the people responsible for this attack still aren’t found, weeks later, Quan takes to visiting the police (even trying to bribe them for whatever leads they have) and researching everything he can about the bombing online.

It isn’t until Irish deputy minister, Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnon) denounces these bombings as being done by a rogue faction of the IRA (the same group he used to be affiliated with) that the film t…