The Foreigner

Martin Campbell’s film comes from Stephen Leather’s 1992 novel The Chinaman, a title dropped for the screen. Pierce Brosnan’s Liam Hennessy is no retired politician but the sitting deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and a Sinn Féin adviser, a former Provisional IRA commander who renounced violence. The bombers are an invented splinter calling itself the Authentic IRA, not the historical organisation. Campbell stripped away nearly everything audiences know Chan for. By the director’s own account Chan suppressed his natural instincts in the action scenes, the fighting stayed in a military register, the ladder and furniture gags were barred, and his posture was hunched so he would read as an older man. The bus and the farmhouse were really blown up rather than computed. The structure matters most here. Much of the picture sits in Belfast with Hennessy’s negotiations, betrayals and phone calls, and Quan leaves the screen for long stretches. In a revenge story sold on Chan, Chan is often a supporting player. Worldwide takings reached 145 million dollars, 111 million from outside North America. A good fit if you are curious to see Chan’s violence played short, silent and without a single joke. Not for anyone who will start checking the clock through the long Northern Irish political scenes while waiting for Quan’s next raid.