The Accidental Spy is a 2001 Hong Kong action film starring Jackie Chan.
Buck Yuen (Chan) is an ordinary man with a mysterious past. Normally a sports equipment salesman, Buck is approached by a stranger who claims Buck is the long-lost son of a terminally ill Korean millionaire, offering Buck a mission if he wishes to uncover his true identity. Thrown into a mysterious conspiracy after accepting this mission, Buck is an Accidental Spy who will travel to South Korea and Istanbul while avoiding assailants everywhere he goes.
The Accidental Spy provides examples of:
- Are You Sure You Can Drive This Thing?: Buck, when he ends up being stuck in the driver’s seat of an out-of-control oil tanker, had to learn how to drive a tanker while keeping it under control.
- Badass Bystander: In his first fight scene, Buck had disarmed two thugs and is struggling with them, when one of them tries reaching for his dropped pistol while his partner had Buck pinned down by grabbing his tie. A nearby old lady helps Buck by taking the pistol aside and clipping away Buck’s tie so that he can continue fighting.
- Car Fu: Buck engage a bunch of thugs in a car chase across a swamp, which ends when he rams the thugs’ vehicle into a marsh.
- Chase Fight: The final confrontation of the movie is essentially a long chase fight between Buck, backed up by the police, pursues Zen’s convertible, where Buck dodges machine-gun fired by the mook in the back, leap into the vehicle and hurls the mook out before confronting Zen one-on-one.
- The Chessmaster: Zen, who is pulling the strings and manipulating everything behind everyone’s backs.
- Chopper on Standby: In the climax, Carmen attempts to rescue Buck who is trapped on the out-of-control tanker while piloting a chopper. It didn’t work, Buck ends up ramming the tanker off a bridge and exploding at the bottom, himself barely surviving the fall.
- Covers Always Lie: The poster above contains lots of stuff that isn't in the movie itself, like the two femme fatales behind Bucknote , the black dude with a gun, fighter jets, the para-trooping soldiers... even the locations are wrong, while the movie is indeed set in Turkey, the Hagia Sophia Mosque, as depicted in the corner, is NOT one of the locations featured in the actual movie at all!
- Disaster Dominoes:
- Buck and Yeung, while making their escape from the insurgents, ends up in a speedboat, and Buck decide to attach a giant hook on the docks where they’re on in an effort to stop the insurgents from pursuing. As they took off, they took the whole pier down with them, sending multiple insurgents into the water, and quickly results in flipping the entire dock and tearing the whole place down.
- Later in the final confrontation, Buck uses a motorcycle to cause Zen’s private Jet to crash into rows of barricades, flip over, through rows and rows of structures before blowing up.
- Doorstop Baby: Buck turns out to be an orphan abandoned at the door of an orphanage. While he has dreams of his birth parents, those turns out to be illusions caused by his drink being spiked into believing he have a family.
- Dreaming the Truth: Buck’s dreams about his parents reaching out for him, which happens throughout the film, although those dreams are actually caused by drugs in his drink.
- Drugs Are Bad: Enforced, when Yeung is revealed to be a drug addict corrupted by Zen.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Buck gets a really delicious eyeful of Yeung as she strides across an adjacent corridor behind a row of windows in a semi-transparent long gown.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: Much of this film is set in Turkey. The ruins of Cappadocia and the Grand Bazaar is prominently featured in several scenes.
- Elite Mook: The thug who acts as Torture Technician, who is an expert with a saber puts up a more brutal fight than most of his colleagues and manage to hold his own against Buck. He eventually gets taken down when insurgents suddenly assault their hideout and he accidentally get shot.
- Fantastic Drug: The drugs spiked into Buck’s drink which even allows him to have false flashbacks of his non-existing parents definitely counts.
- Fruit Cart: In the final chase scene a truck of watermelons gets hit by the out-of-control oil tanker.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Buck, after fleeing from a group of thugs from the public bathhouse, loses his Modesty Towel (while in the middle of Turkey’s Grand Bazaar, in front of hundreds of people...) and fights off his pursuers while butt-naked. He does get to use plenty of Hand-or-Object Underwear though, which culminates in…
- Hiding in a Hijab: After escaping from thugs in the Grand Bazaar while naked, Buck manage to land on some drapes and towels, quickly turns those into a makeshift hijab.
- I Have Your Wife: Well, Love Interest. Buck, while fighting off several thugs, have to stop when he sees Yeung being held at gunpoint, at which point a thug knocks him out cold.
- Improvised Weapon: Buck, played by Jackie Chan, does this in his fight scenes, notably while nude in the Grand Bazaar and later against thugs during the breakout scene.
- Inescapable Net: One of the many Improvised Weapon used by Buck. When a thug tries slashing him, Buck grabs a nearby fishing net and quickly wraps his opponent up.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate: Buck gets involved into the mission after thwarting a robbery and becoming a media sensation.
- Kill the Cutie: Yeung, the most innocent and gentle character, dies of a drug overdose.
- Man on Fire: Zen’s eventual fate when his convertible crashes into an oil tanker, and an explosion sends him flying into the road while set alight. Although unusually for villains, he actually survives and was last seen having the police put out the fire and arrest him alive.
- Memento MacGuffin: The silver crucifix Buck receives, from his long-lost father, which he frequently dreams of his parents holding it.
- Necktie Leash: During the elevator fight, one of the thugs tries subduing Buck by grabbing his tie. A nearby old lady then gives Buck a hand by clipping his tie off with shears.
- Public Bathhouse Scene: One scene takes place in a Turkish public bathhouse, and when thugs coming after Buck shows up, Buck had to flee while clad in a Modesty Towel. And because Naked People Are Funny, he loses the towel a few minutes later.
- Roofhopping: Buck in his first fight scene. On skyscrapers! He manages to leap to safety by grabbing a nearby crane.
- R-Rated Opening: The movie opens in the fields of Anatolia in Turkey, in a refugee camp where insurgents suddenly attacks the base and kill more than a dozen people onscreen.
- Slipping a Mickey: The dreams of Buck about his living parents are actually caused by mind-altering drugs slipped into his drink.
- Slo-Mo Big Air: Happens during the two chase scenes Buck finds himself in, especially the finale when making Zen crash into the out-of-control tanker.
- Tomato Surprise: Much of the film is about Buck’s mission to find out the truth of his Disappeared Dad; but in the end it turns out his dreams of his biological parents are faked, caused by a hallucinogenic drug spiked in his drink.
- Unlikely Hero: Buck Yuen, sports equipment salesman turned fighter and crime-stopper turned accidental spy who must stop a crime lord from hijacking the antidote to a fatal disease for his own gains.
- Unwilling Suspension: Buck, after being captured alive, is subjected to being suspended from his wrists and used as a human punching bag in a Cold-Blooded Torture moment, although he gets a chance to escape when the thugs’ hideout suddenly gets attacked by insurgents.
- Vapor Wear: Yeung’s selection of dressed and gowns, which are frequently semi-transparent or revealing her cleavage. Especially after the docks escape from the insurgents, where her dress becomes fully wet and clings to her skin and she is barefoot.
- Being played by Taiwanese supermodel and Ms. Fanservice Vivian Hsu
, that’s a given.
- Being played by Taiwanese supermodel and Ms. Fanservice Vivian Hsu
