The Foreigner

Another musty, monochromatic revenge thriller from Martin Campbell (Edge of Darkness), this time starring Jackie Chan as a grieving father who seeks retribution when his daughter gets killed in a terrorist bombing.   A group called “the Authentic IRA” takes credit for the attack, and when Chan’s mysterious Quan decides that an ex-IRA politician (Pierce Brosnan) knows the names of the bombers, he gives up his old life to seek revenge.  The 63-year-old Chan does his best impression of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger doing their best impressions of Clint Eastwood and Charles Brosnan’s craggy old angel of death routine, but The Foreigner is by-the-numbers in every way imaginable, and the actors mostly look bored.  Chan spends most of the second half of the film off-screen, so Brosnan emerges as the true lead of The Foreigner, anchoring a cluttered plot that serves the usual pro-torture, pro-surveillance, anti-rights and anti-woman agendas. D.B.