Parents' Guide to A Legend

Billed as a standalone sequel to the Jackie Chan movies The Myth and Kung Fu Yoga, this offering proves an awkward mix of a modern-day caper and a wannabe historical epic. Disappointingly, A Legend's most memorable moment is Chan being reanimated as a younger man via "de-aging" technology, which largely reduces the veteran action star to a smooth-faced rendering of his younger self. Looking more like a CGI video game character than a real person, it's an unnecessary distraction in a movie that's crammed full of too much plot and not enough attention to detail. With lots of exposition but no real setup, the movie's jumbled timeline involves Chan and his co-stars playing out two version of a similar story, as different characters in both. Namely, they must defeat Aarif Rahman as they seek to uncover the mysteries of a piece of jade that induces dreams that transport them back in time, as well as avoid murder at the hands of Rahman's Hun general as they find themselves living through a tumultuous period as Han Dynasty soldiers and royalty. Thankfully the movie's fight scenes have enough zip and agility to remind us why Chan is a global star, particularly a climactic scene inside a bright white glacier. But the rest is a technicolor mess that invokes the same kind of fever dreams its protagonists dive into, without the same surprises or spoils for the audience.