YMMV / Shanghai Knights

• Complete Monster:
  • Lord Nelson Rathbone is a British Royal seeking the crown of England for himself. To this end, Rathbone has stolen the Seal of China and murdered Chon and his sister Lin's father who was the Keeper, and has both Chon and Roy O'Bannon subjected to torture as well as later antagonizing Chon in a sword fight. Rathbone allies with Wu Chow—who wants the Seal to get control in China—and intends to arrange a mass shooting with him that will wipe out all nine of the Royals in the line of succession and thus make him the King as a result.
  • Wu Chow himself is the illegitimate brother of the Emperor of China. Wanting to take power in China and by doing so eventually take full control, Wu Chow hires Rathbone to break in to steal the Seal of China while killing the Keeper. Once Wu Chow then gets the Seal from Rathbone, he intends to kill the Royal Family with a Gatling gun and deliver Rathbone the crown as payment—and fights and tries to kill Lin for her interference in the process.
• Even Better Sequel: While Shanghai Knights breaks away from the Western trappings of Shanghai Noon, many people felt it has some of the best action sequences in any of Jackie's Hollywood movies.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Charlie Chaplin is played by a young Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
  • Nelson Rathbone is played by Aidan Gillen. It's his first major American film, and it premiered a year before his memorable turn in The Wire began.
• Strangled by the Red String: Even for a goofy action flick, Lin is clearly way out of Roy's league (both in terms of looks and ass-kicking), yet becomes smitten with him after just a few days and one conversation of knowing him, and still wants to date him even after Chon explains all of Roy's flaws in brutal detail (including his philandering), for no other reason than "he has a good heart." Girl, you can do so much better.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Be honest, if you were Chon would you want Roy dating your sister?? Sure, Chon promising Roy he'd put in a good word with his sister, bad-mouthing him to her instead, then pretending nothing happened afterwards is dishonest, but the reasons Chon list for why he doesn't want Roy dating Lin are 100% valid (especially the part about Roy being a philanderer), yet Roy and the narrative brush him off as just being an overprotective big brother to Lin and a bad friend to Roy, who never addresses his own flaws or stops browbeating him about it until Chon reluctantly gives his blessing.
  • When Chon and Roy discover Lin is imprisoned, Chon immediately considers breaking her out, only for Roy to pull Chon aside and discourage him, arguing that he can use the fact that the detective is a fan and try to get her released that way. It fails, and this is used to portray Roy as incompetent, but Chon's original plan would have been to break out a felon from a jail cell.

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