Jackie Chan's Skiptrace earns big with old tricks

Johnny Knoxville shows a board at the film's news release in Beijing. He is known for the MTV reality stunt show Jackass.

In spite of the criticism, Skiptrace, which has a Chinese hero helped by a foreign partner, is seen as a reflection of Chan's drive to boost China's reputation in the world.

"When I was promoting The Karate Kid (2010), many foreigners were wowed by China's beauty," says Chan in a recent interview in Beijing.

"But the (scenes) featuring the Great Wall and the Wudang Mountains (in The Karate Kid) are just a small part of China's diverse landscape. I want to show them more," he says.

The film, which is about an unlikely pair of buddies, is in a way a Chinese response to Midnight Run, the 1988 American film starring Robert De Niro.

In the latest film, a retired Hong Kong cop, played by Chan, teams up with an American gambler, played by Johnny Knoxville, to take on a notorious Hong Kong criminal.

Their journey, which spans the vast grasslands of Mongolia and the picturesque landscapes of southwestern China, finally concludes in Hong Kong.

Chinese celebrations, such as a mud-sprinkling festival and the flying of Kongming lanterns in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, are weaved into the film.

The Kongming lantern is a tiny hot-air balloon made of oil paper.

Speaking of what inspired him to make the movie, Chan says that he first thought about making the movie around 25 years ago.

He first planned to cast Jet Li, a big name in martial arts movies, to play the cop, while he would play the gambler.