Shaolin

Jackie Chan is a baker who doesn't play much a of role in this movie until the end. Then, when we is attacked by dozens of bad guys, the kids instruct him to "make noodles" or "kneed bread" and low and behold, those are just the right moves to defeat the bad ones.

The rest of the movie centers around a martial arts Buddhist monastery and some warlords. Most of it was "dark" and I had a tough time following who was doing what. (I thought a guy had died in a previous scene, then in the next scene he would come out and do something else.) The whole point of the plot seems to be nothing more than setting up of marital arts fights, and those are fairly few and far between. The "warlords" seem to be fighting over who-knows-what, but in the end, a foreigner can just come in and blow them all up. There is also the story of redemption as one warlord decides to become a monk after his daughter dies. It seems as if they went grabbing for all the plot elements they could find to through in to one movie.

The brief Jackie Chan "baker" part is alas one of the best parts of the movie. (I knew who couldn't go through a movie without putting on some moves.) That is not saying much.