With all the science fiction and super hero films getting all the attention at the box office it comes as no surprise that it seems to be the only thing anyone wants to make now. Martial Arts action icon Jackie Chan is throwing his hat into the genre with his latest flick Bleeding Steel, but does it offer up the usual action and fun fans love from Chan’s films or will it be too much for your heart to take?

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Bleeding Steel follows Lin, a police inspector in modern Hong Kong. While tracking down a deranged, mecha-enhanced villain, Lin discovers that a geneticist’s lost bio-chemical invention has been surgically implanted into his missing daughter. With the help of a young hacker, Lin connects the dots between the device that haunts his daughter, his enemy’s sinister army, and a strange cultural phenomenon called “Bleeding Steel.” Everything about this film made me think of the older Jackie Chan films where he used to love bringing interesting new technologies and gadgets in often times over the top ways. This film features what seems like a gritty crime drama wrapped in a Sci-fi feature, but is so silly at times it is just hard to fully take it seriously.

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Chan is actually great here bringing a lot of emotion to the role and of course his signature action, but its everything around him that just brings it down into a more ridiculous silly way. Outside of the villains themselves and their ship/Lair everything else here feels pretty normal. They have used these two aspects along with their laser guns of sorts to attempt to create a cool future twist, but the costumes and overall direction with these unassuming villains made it laughable at times. This is where it reminded me of some of those older crazy action flicks Chan used to do with the bad guys wearing pleather and lots of silver and black to showcase them being clearly super villains. Thankfully you can let it go realizing this is Chan stepping into this silly world of sci-fi.

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There is plenty of action with some great gunfights and decent fight sequences that may not quite live up to Chan’s previous films, but still fun to watch. I was hoping this was going to be a gritty sci-fi flick as Chan has offered up some great films like this recently, but instead it is more cheesy fun than anything else. IF you dig the usual fun of old school Jackie Chan then you might have a good time with this one, but know it is just a fun popcorn film and little else.